Dear Presidents of the EU institutions, Prime Minister, Mr. Governor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The moderator has given me some cues. This is small fry, really. There is more reason to be glad, but before talking about these more positive developments, I am going to talk about some fundamental political problems that we are facing.
Foreign Minister Plassnik rightly pointed out – and that is the first thing I noted – that subsidiarity and better law-making are vague notions. Yes, that is true. They are quite vague, that is why the big debate on the future of Europe does not centre on these notions but they should be placed in the centre. When we talk about subsidiarity, about better law-making, about cutting red tape, we are actually talking about fundamental political questions. They are questions about the tensions existing between freedom and responsibility, as well as state action and individual responsibility, the tensions between obligations and rights, as well as between transparency and bureaucracy.
The following questions are touching on the roots of our systems based on democratic principles and the rule of law. Where do we need central and uniform rules, and where do we not need them? The big questions we are facing – and I am going one step further – are how much state intervention can a lively democracy that is based on the involvement of citizens actually accept? And I know that this gives rise to some contradictions, because exactly those citizens that are warning against excessive state action, are also in favour of state intervention when they are personally affected. We are all aware of these developments.
What significance does this have in the debate about Europe?
How much ‘Europe’ do we actually want? How much integration is necessary in order to tackle the challenges of the future? Prime Minister Stoiber has already alluded to these important questions and he has made a number of very important and appropriate statements. Another question is how much integration is possible without creating a ubiquitous European centralism? Let’s focus on a number of clear cut notions.
First of all, ever since the Maastricht Treaty the principle of subsidiarity has been a guiding legal maxim of the European Union, i.e. only those things should be and are regulated at the European level that the national states are incapable of regulating satisfactorily. These are cross-border issues, questions of common interest, and – you would be surprised to learn – that in may opinion there are many areas in which EU law should not have interfered. I am able to exert an influence on the future; the area for which I am responsible is the largest legislative area within the European Union, the single market. The number of legal proposals has been reduced significantly, I don’t know if you have noticed it – since I am responsible in this respect. Maybe it’s a good thing that you haven’t noticed it – because that means that it has not been necessary to make dozens or hundreds of legal proposals.
But allow me to make a few political comments at this point. Most European citizens are not convinced that we actually abide by our own maxims. People generally believe that there is too much regulation in Europe, that they are too technocratic and too complicated. Europe is often equated with too much red tape and cold technocratic law-making and that is quite an alarming signal to me. People often feel that there is too much regulation, that is true. European bureaucracy is also a myth. I don’t want to be polemic here, but, Mr. Governor, allow me to point out the following: I am sure that you have more staff in Lower Austria than the European Commission. We have a staff of 22,000 but no teachers and police officers.
I simply want to say that Europe is not a bureaucratic monster. That is a myth. Yet that is not the core of people’s criticism. What do people actually criticise? I share this criticism. Too much of what we do takes place above people’s heads, it does reach out to their minds. They don’t consider the EU as having a soul. We need to change the way in which we do things. Let me now publicly criticise another EU institution, which is something I don’t normally do, but this will not fall on deaf ears here. There isn’t enough involvement and there is a lack of transparency in the area of law-making. The European Council should be more transparent. Law-making is something that often happens behind closed doors and we all know it. If we have this kind of system, the democratic order is violated, so to speak. Citizens have the right to know how laws and decisions are made.
Bismarck was very cynical and said that citizens were better off not knowing how sausages are made and laws are made. I, on the other hand, am in favour of full transparency in both cases. Otherwise not much can be achieved.
What I would like to say is that when we talk about subsidiarity, about the guiding principles of our legislation, about who does what and about where the limits of our activity is, we are actually talking about our values, convictions, and our European identity. That is why this is not a marginal and technocratic issue, it is one that should be at the forefront of big political debates about Europe. Allow me now to say a few things about what we can and will be able to do on a practical level in order to better achieve the goal of subsidiarity. Better law-making and the dismantlement of bureaucracy is a programme embarked upon by the European Commission under my responsibility, and that is a significant contribution toward achieving these goals. This programme has both a political and an economic goal. What is the political goal? We would like to counter a number of tendencies. People in Europe are increasingly disinclined to promote European integration. We have conducted an analysis of the problem and what we are seeing is that there are citizens who think that Europe interferes too much – I won’t say if that is correct or not – but that is what people feel. We should eliminate the existing gaps between European citizens and institutions. We can close and bridge these gaps if we take our own principles seriously. A number of specific proposals were submitted yesterday and more today. I fully subscribe to them. I am committed to these things. What the Constitutional Committee said with regards to a better application of the principle of subsidiarity, could be achieved by means of a political decision. The Commission will not be opposed to accepting this political decision hinted at in the Constitutional Treaty. We support this principle fully, it should be enforced. Yet there is a number of other things that need to be mentioned. There should be more formalism regarding subsidiarity tests or checks, the Commission and I are quite in favour of this because subsidiarity controls need to be scrutinised and there should be formalism. Courts should also be in a position to review these procedures but only as to where the procedural steps have been taken. The result of a subsidiarity control will always be a political result. I am familiar with Mr. Stoiber’s examples and the opinions and comments made in the Bundestag. We are a community of 25 sovereign member states, and naturally we don’t have 25 identical views on the application of the principle of sibsidiarity. There are different traditions in the various member countries, different administrative cultures e.g. in Germany or in Austria, truly federalist states within the European Union. France and Spain deal with questions very differently, for example. These are problems we have to tackle on an everyday basis. Let us refer to the principle that a European project must remain a European project, it must entail European values rather than trying to solve local problems.
As far as the economic sector is concerned, their goals are uncontested. There is no doubt about the fact that European economies face too heavy a burden, small and medium sized enterprises are facing administrative burdens. The lawmakers at various levels impose many regulations on them and this has decreased international competitiveness. There is too large a number of laws and regulations, there are too many bureaucratic requirements: statistical requirements, reporting requirements. These are much stricter than in other parts of the world. Dismantling all of this will result in a more favourable situation for SMEs. Then entrepreneurs would not have to spend 25-30% of their time working for the state, but for their own companies. And that’s what we want. I hope by the end of this year that we will be able to devise a method aiming at assessing and reducing bureaucratic costs. The Commission has not made this decision yet, but I am going to propose it. We want to have a quantifiable goal and I think that a 25% reduction of bureaucratic costs for entrepreneurs would be very good. Later on we could also involve public administrations. I am aware that it is an ambitious goal, but it is not unrealistic. There are member countries that have already made considerable headway, these are not simply imagined figures. As far as economics go, I believe this can provide the right impetus. Lawmakers would say: we won’t impose everything on you, we’ll allow you to have more influence. That is a positive development. Yet there are also association presidents who often complain about over-regulation and are just in favour of the market economy. The next day they contact us in Brussels and demand that this or that law be adopted and that this or that subsidy be given. What I tell these people is that if there is less regulation that means more freedom. But more freedom means more responsibility. It is not a one-way street; you cannot demand more leeway without wanting to assume responsibility. That is an extremely important aspect. That is why I have linked this initiative with another one for a European alliance for stronger corporate responsibility. Wherever we do not regulate, we want entrepreneurs to assume responsibility for their positions, for the future of their employees. That is a responsibility which they should not take lightly. Let me now come to the conclusion of my short presentation. We have developed a very broad programme, there is no need for me to reiterate all the details. The Commission has withdrawn not 28 but 68 proposals. Others we cannot withdraw. Hence one third of all proposals discussed in Parliament has been withdrawn – much to the dismay of the Parliament, by the way.
Since President Borrell is here, let me point something out at this juncture. The Parliament asked us to do exactly that, but in practical terms it behaves a bit differently because every law has at least one supporter in every parliamentary group.
Secondly, we have started to review the entire acquis, all the laws and regulations with a view to simplifying and streamlining things. 220 basic acts have been identified and they comprise up to 100 pieces of secondary legislation. We are thus talking about thousands of laws. The Commission is now reviewing this streamlining process and these pieces of legislation comprise all the topics which I have already alluded to. Most of them have also already been transmitted to the legislative authorities. The Commission is very much in favour of simplifying things, but then the Council and the Parliament also need to intervene. It is not just the Commission’s job to speed things up; everyone needs to be involved in speeding up this process. This modernisation and simplification campaign will comprise the entire compilation. I am talking about modernisation and simplification, but not about deregulation. We have achieved a certain level of European integration that must not be weakened. We don’t want to weaken the environmental or social levels, we want to enhance the respective legislation. The problem is not the goal of regulation, rather the enforceability or lack thereof. This Commission, ladies and gentlemen, does not support the radical positions of British conservatives that say that the best state is the one that does not do anything. We are very much in favour of the European social model including market economy structures that we have all over Europe. We want this model to have a sound framework ensuring that our common social goals can be achieved. We do not support radical positions dating back to early capitalism.
And now I come to the conclusion of my presentation: allow me to mention briefly the codification programme. Codification is one form of simplification; this programme has been up and running for a number of years. Out of 900 legal acts that the Prodi Commission wanted to codify, only a few dozen have been codified. Why? The problem is quite bizarre. If regulations have not been translated into all the languages of the European Union, they cannot be dismantled yet – that does not make matters simpler by any means. Allow me finally to speak briefly about the future. We have already implemented a number of rules, impact assessment and the subsidiarity controls have already been mentioned. I am very much in favour of impact assessment. But who should be responsible for it? Not only those who come up with the laws. What we need is the independent validation of impact assessment and the Commission is working on it.
All in all, we are moving toward a political revolution, ladies and gentlemen, and there are some main problems to be tackled. And these are mainly intellectual problems. We are moving toward a new form of European integration, toward cooperative rather than regulatory integration. It is not that easy to explain to institutions that their mentality and approach – coming up with new suggestions and proposals, etc. – need to be changed. We can only be successful if all institutions speak with a single voice. That’s the raison d’être of this conference and I am very thankful to the Austrian presidency for having launched this initiative.
Thank you!
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