PROGRAMME OF ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMISSION UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF ROY JENKINS, FOR 1980
by Altiero Spinelli
SUMMARY: The Parliament examines the Commission Programme for 1980, Roy Jenkins's last year as President. Spinelli returns to the issues which have characterized the first months of the directly elected Parliament's term of office; however, attention focuses more and more on the institutional question and the profound reasons for the crisis in the Community, and the need for a radical change in relations between the Commission, Governments and the Parliament. "Speeches in European Parliament, 1976-1986", Pier Virgilio Dastoli Editor. (EP, 14 February 1980)
Mr President, I am intervening on behalf of the Italian Communists. I did not want to relinquish my turn to speak, and I shall speak because I think that we have something to say which might perhaps prove interesting to the Commission.
We cannot conceal our profound dissatisfaction at the Commission's programme for 1980, because of the huge rift which exists between our awareness of the proportions of the crisis towards which we are moving and the action which it has proposed to take. On the one hand, the President, Mr Jenkins, forecasts nothing more nor less than the possibility of the collapse of the economic and social order on which post-war Europe has been based. And we are convinced that he is absolutely right: the few figures which he gives axe frightening in themselves.
Certainly, no-one can expect the picture which he gives to be changed radically through courses of action undertaken just in 1980. But the action taken during this year must nevertheless be such as to meet the problem; it should, that is, be the vigorous beginning or continuation of courses of action which will then be continued for a number of years. However, it is precisely the description of what the Commission proposes to undertake which perplexes us, because of the inadequate and imprecise nature of its proposals.
The President, Mr Jenkins, is right to Place the energy problem at the centre of the Commiss ion's activities for 1980. We agree with him that a strong investment policy is needed for this sector. And it is fair to say, on the one hand, that we cannot rely just on the effects of the market for this and, on the other, that the Community as such must intervene.
But a good deal of the rest is obscure! There is not a word about the necessity for harmonizing Community policy on energy costs. And yet without such a common policy no further action can be taken. There is not a word to tell us whether encouraging the burning of coal means acquiring the coal necessary at the lowest possible price, which means importing it, or whether it means introducing highly protective measures for Community coal. There is nothing to indicate the extent of the financial outlay which the Community would have to make in order to begin this huge investment policy. And finally, there is a worrying mention of the fact that the money needed could be obtained through a tax on energy consumption or a duty on imported energy. We should like to know where the logic of such a proposal lies.
Energy is becoming too expensive. We are already having difficulty in absorbing the increases which have taken place, and in many cases there are still intervention policies which hold the price down and prevent a balance being achieved between demand and supply. Are you really then suggesting that the cost of energy should be raised a few more points by imposing a tax or an import
duty on it?
There is a wide spread of direct and indirect taxes, part of which could be transferred to the Community budget to allow us to follow a reasonable investment policy, but you insist in asking not for an effort on the part of the economy as a whole, but that the cost should fall in the precise area where you would like prices to be reduced!
But at least, when speaking of energy, Mr Jenkins' speech contains some ideas to be followed, which might need to be defined or even perhaps corrected, but which are there nevertheless. What should we say about other matters which are also very serious? We have asked in vain what instruments the Commission proposes to use to reactivate our economics, and what the particular role of the Community is.
We must certainly help to restructure or close down obsolete industries, and to encourage capital and labour to move towards new undertakings. But the amount of legislation and finance in the Community at present devoted to structural policies (including social and industrial policy, research, agriculture, regional policy) is completely insufficient to make this encouragement really valid.
Mr Jenkins tells us that the recovery of our economics can no longer be separated from the development of the poorer countries, and from increased demand. Certainly, but what is the minimum commitment necessary in order to bring this development about? We ought to be considering a large-scale plan for transferring resources for thirty years to the developing countries, and instead of this the allocations for this in our Community budget and in our national budgets are quite clearly derisory. And so? We have looked in vain for even a sketch of an answer in the programme which the Commission has presented to us.
And yet 1980 has one special characteristic for the Community and the Commission, as during it not one but two Community budgets must be discussed, and therefore we shall have two opportunities to decide on how much money to spend and on what to spend it.
Certainly for the 1980 budget the most important matter will be to take advantage to the rejection of the budget, in order finally to exercise control over the crazy support system for agricultural prices. And we are counting on the fact that, in its forthcoming drafts, the Commission will create a strong link between its prices proposals and the proposals on the co-responsibility levies, as this alone can guarantee that all the Community's resources are not swallowed up in financing stock-piling and the sale of agricultural surpluses. But in 1980 we shall only be able to take the first steps.
In the 1981 draft budget, we shall have to think of the real scale of the problems.which the Community must tackle in order to decide on the finance involved.
I must note that the Commission had promised to put forward a proposal to increase its own resources before the end of the year; then it postponed this until February; now it seems to have been postponed until june, going by the attached memorandum. This is not how they should prepare to tackle the problems raised by the President of the Commission himself.
We well understand that the Commission is only partly responsible for the indefinite nature of the programmes. The real difficulty lies in the fact that the Commission is not in a position to say, or even to imagine, that policy the Council is prepared to follow in one sector or another. The Commission is like an aeroplane which flies through the fog without radar, and which certainly does not know where its blind flight will eventually take it. This is the real reason why the programmes presented every year have so little political value.
At this point we come to the institutional problem. Once again, Mr Jenkins is right to raise it. But his way of presenting it to us is quite inadequate.
I shall not mention the report of the three wise men and the Spierenburg report. Both of them are so marginal when it comes to the real institutional problems of our Community that they are really not worth considering.
The first institutional problem, which is a central one for 1980, lies in the fact that a new Commission will be appointed at the end of this year. All that Mr Jenkins can suggest is that when the new Commission has been appointed, it should present itself to this Assembly. This will not of course be for a vote of confidence but to find out whether it is acceptable to Parliament through a debate like the one which is being held today. No. The new democratic life of the Community requires a bit more imagination.
In our countries, each new government certainly presents itself to its parliament, but this is the act which concludes a process of drawing up plans and appointing ministers which takes place at elections, party conferences, agreements between the parties when there is a coalition (and at the Community level we can only have coalitions) and undertakings between government and parlia-merit on the programmes to be followed. This whole mechanism does not yet exist at the Community level, or exists only in embryonic form.
The Commission, which is the political driving force which has the duty of putting forward proposals and initiating courses of action on the policies to be followed, has until now always been chosen without previous debate, either by the Parliament or the Council, on its policies or its members, and without any commitment on the part of Council or Parliament to support it in one direction or another.
However, this Assembly, which is made up of the legitimate representatives of the people of Europe, should insist that the governments should have to face a debate in the Parliament before deciding on the Members of the Commission and not afterwards, so that the Parliament can make clear its requirements on the policies and membership of the Commission.
Given a reasonable procedure for cooperation, it should be possible to reach an agreement between Parliament and the governments of the Member States, and, therefore, to create a Commission which knows, on the one hand, that it has been appointed in order to bring about a certain set of policies and, on the other, that Council and Parliament are both committed to helping it to achieve these.
We shall put forward proposals to this end and shall ask this Assembly to discuss them promptly, so that in 1980, that is before the Commission is appointed, and not in 1981 after it has been appointed, the Parliament can show that there is now a new tide of democracy in the Community.