Claims To Legitimacy: The European Commission Between Continuity and Change

JCMS 2005 Volume 43. Number 1. pp.
193–220
Claims to Legitimacy: The European Commission

between Continuity and Change*
MYRTO TSAKATIKA
Athens University of Economics and Business
Abstract
This article attempts to spell out the Commission’s present position on the following
set of questions: according to which normative criteria can European integration,
European governance and the Commission’s own roles in the two processes be con-
sidered legitimate? Taking the 2001 White Paper on Governance as a reference point,
it is argued that the Commission is trapped between two sets of claims to legitimacy:
one set of claims coming from the Monnet tradition of thought, where the stress is on
unity, efficiency, responsibility and impartiality; and a second set of claims coming
from the post-Maastricht critique of the Union, which highlight diversity, clarity and
democracy. The result has been that the European Commission entered the recent
constitutional debate with a set of proposals that did not do much to strengthen its
own position in the Union, or to contribute innovative ideas to the debate, which was
meant to deal with the great challenges that lie ahead.
Introduction
Legitimacy refers to the idea that the exercise of power is normatively accept-
able and for that reason voluntarily accepted, in the context of all political
entities where such power is effectively exercised, including the European
Union (EU) (Beetham, 1991; Beetham and Lord, 1998; Schmitter, 2001; Bel-
lamy and Castiglione, 2003; Føllesdal, 2004; Lord and Magnette, 2004). Le-
gitimacy can be examined from an empirical or from a normative point of
*
The author would like to thank two anonymous referees for their comments.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
194 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
view, depending on whether we are interested, respectively, in the extent to

which the exercise of power is indeed accepted, or in the extent to which the
exercise of power conforms to certain normative criteria (Schmitt and Tho-
massen, 1999, p. 9). In the context of the EU, the legitimacy of the exercise of
power (in empirical and normative terms) can be broken down into three com-
ponent parts which can be distinguished only for analytical purposes – in
practice they are closely interconnected. These are the legitimacy of Europe-
an integration as such, the legitimacy of European governance, and the legit-
imacy of the roles of the main European actors. Decisions in the direction of
pooling more sovereignty at the European level can be said to entail the exer-
cise of power, as can the decisions taken in the context of processes of gov-
ernance and the actions of the agents they involve.
According to Phillippe Schmitter, the question of (normative) legitimacy
is brought up when (empirical) legitimacy is missing or deficient (Schmitter,
2001, p. 1). This is exactly what has happened in the European Union. During
the last decade, the popular acceptance of EU governance and the main actors
involved in it has been diminishing, while its present enlargement is said to be
likely to bring about a further drop in legitimacy. This state of affairs has led
to the widespread reconsideration of the legitimacy of the EU’s governance
and institutions in normative terms (Bellamy and Castiglione, 2003). It has
also led to the questioning of the normative acceptability of the process of
European integration as such. According to which normative criteria, then,
should the legitimacy of European integration, European governance and its
actors be evaluated?
The European Convention’s ambition has been to come up with a plan for
constitutional/institutional reform, which would reflect pertinent answers to
these questions. Exactly what are the answers given in the draft Constitution-
al Treaty, is bound to be a matter of careful examination. This is because the
proposed constitutional/institutional arrangements reflect a particular choice
of normative criteria for understanding and evaluating the legitimacy of EU
integration, governance and actors, a choice that could turn out to be impor-
tant for the acceptability (empirical legitimacy) of the EU and, therefore, its
future. Given that the choice could be significant indeed, it is important to
know how it came to be made. This requires, among other things, examining
the normative background behind the positions of the key actors in the Con-
vention. Clearly, no spontaneous consensus could have been expected on ques-
tions of normative principle: key EU and national actors came to the
constitutional debate with proposals that reflected different answers to the
normative questions concerning EU legitimacy. It will be the task of this arti-
cle to examine the answers of one of these actors, the European Commission,
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION BETWEEN CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 195
and this examination will draw on the Commission’s White Paper on Govern-
ance (COM, 2001b).
Why the White Paper on Governance? Even when it was released, the
White Paper received little attention. It came out during the summer period,
when EU and national political business is slow; it was overshadowed by the
constitutional process announced in Nice and launched in Laeken. The aca-
demic attention that it did receive was highly critical. The White Paper was
examined mainly as a political intervention (Wincott, 2001, p. 899). It was
widely dismissed as a strategic, ‘self-interested’ move, meant to defend the
Commission and its institutional role in the European Union (Héritier, 2001,
pp. 3–77; Scharpf, 2001, pp. 5–8), as well as to provide a response to the
Santer Commission resignation (Walker, 2001, pp. 44–5; Wind, 2001, pp.
185–6). Moreover, it was dismissed as a bad political move: it made nobody
happy, since it alienated both reformists and ‘skeptic traditionalists’ (Joerges,
2002, p. 442). The White Paper was also criticized in substantive terms: it
was seen to be inadequate to deal with the Union’s problems; and that it was
not up to new challenges facing the Union (Scharpf, 2001, pp. 5–8). So, why
the White Paper?
The 2001 White Paper, much like Joschka Fischer’s 2000 speech at the
Humboldt University of Berlin (Fischer, 2000), can be seen to be more than
just yesterday’s news. Being one of the first preparatory steps of the official
constitutional debate, it can be considered a piece of EU intellectual history.
It can be seen as outlining the Commission’s broad normative conception of
where the Union should be going, what it should be about, how and by whom
it should be governed in the future. This outline, rough as it may be, is more
illuminating than any of the Commission’s subsequent official contributions
to the European Convention. This is because it was written before the Com-
mission entered the official constitutional debate, in the context of which,
each actor must take the positions of others into account, engage in negotia-
tion and compromise, and change the emphasis, modify, or abandon one’s
own preferred positions. From this point of view, the White Paper is the most
appropriate source of information on the answers that the Commission gave
to the normative questions concerning legitimacy with which the Convention
set out to deal.
Section I of this article will explore the normative arguments concerning
the legitimacy of European integration, European governance and its actors,
that were most influential in the drafting of the White Paper on Governance.
On the one hand, the Commission is the institutional bearer of a significant
tradition of thought on European integration and the European project in gen-
eral, which goes back to the neofunctionalist incrementalism and technocrat-
ic elitism of the Monnet plan. The Monnet plan can be shown to have generated
196 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
a particular conception of what renders European integration, European gov-

ernance, as well as the Commission itself, legitimate. On the other hand, the
last decade, which has seen the Union’s constitutional problem, democratic
credentials and efficiency brought under the spotlight, has seen the emer-
gence of new normative arguments concerning legitimacy put forward in the
context of an unprecedented wave of criticism against the Monnet tradition
and the Commission itself.
Part II will examine the White Paper as a crucial crossroads of continuity
and change in the Commission’s worldview: the White Paper reflects the
meeting of legitimacy claims coming from the Monnet tradition of thought,
which it continues to evoke, and new legitimacy claims coming from criti-
cisms that have emerged during the last ‘constitutional’ decade, to which it
attempts to respond. The understanding of how we should assess the legiti-
macy of European integration, European governance and the Commission, as
it emerges from the White Paper, will be examined in terms of continuity and
change. The normative principles, to which continuity and change respective-
ly appeal, will be pointed out and ways identified in which tensions between
them are handled in the White Paper.
I. From Monnet to Maastricht: Different Claims to Legitimacy

The intellectual and normative background to the White Paper can be traced
to two different sets of arguments concerning the legitimacy of European in-
tegration, European governance and the Commission itself. One will certain-
ly not be able to interpret the White Paper and the claims to legitimacy that
can be derived from it, unless one looks back to the origins of the European
project and the legacy of Jean Monnet, which bestowed a particular concep-
tion of legitimacy to the then high authority of the European Coal and Steel
Community, today’s European Commission. But one cannot make sense of
the White Paper’s claims to legitimacy either, if one is not familiar with the
novelties brought about during the long period of constitutional consolidation
that began in Europe with the discussions preceding the Treaty of Maastricht
and is expected to culminate with the adoption and ratification of the Europe-
an Constitution.
The Monnet Conception of Legitimacy

Integration. The Monnet plan can be shown to have generated a particular
conception of what makes the process of European integration, European
governance and the role of the European Commission legitimate. Integration
as such, as well as its modality, can be considered legitimate because it is the
best instrument available for the achievement of European unity. The
legitimating argument that could be evoked for the process of European inte-
gration itself was not utilitarian, in the sense that it was not an argument that
appealed to the maximization of national interests; rather it was an argument
that appealed to the achievement of European unity, which would require
‘superseding competition and conflict between nation-states by replacing the
state system with a qualitatively different system’ (Christiansen, 1997, p. 2).
European unity was never an ideal empty of content. Rather, it was meant to
be a state of affairs characterized by stable peace and prosperity. But while
the legitimating argument for integration as such was not utilitarian, it was
made in instrumental terms, in the sense that integration was not an end itself.
It was valuable as an instrument to achieve European unity, lasting peace and
economic prosperity for the peoples of Europe.
Not only integration as such, but also its modality would be legitimate by
reference to the valuable end of the process. Step-by-step integration, to be
guided by the judgement of a technocratic elite rather by political judgement
which involves citizens, and according to emerging opportunity rather than to
fixed rules or principles, would be legitimate because it would be the best
way to arrive at the valuable aim of European unity. The consequence here
would be that a fixed constitution for Europe would not be a legitimate step
before the process of integration had run its course, which presumably would
be when the aim of integration had by and large been achieved. This is be-
cause functional integration would be a better instrument to achieve Europe-
an unity than a constitution could have been.
Governance. Coming to the question of what arguments could be evoked for

the legitimacy of European governance from the moment of its establishment
to the moment at which the political union of the future would be constructed,
the Monnet conception generates two answers. The first is the superior effi-
ciency of European governance in identifying citizens’ needs and delivering
results, compared to that of separate national state structures (Lord and Mag-
nette, 2002, pp. 4–5). Such efficiency would be ensured through the basically
technocratic form of governance that the Monnet plan entailed. It would be a
technocratic elite, rather than politicians or citizens who would guide the grad-
ual process of integration (Featherstone, 1994, p. 154). Technocratic govern-
ance is permeated by the distrust of political disagreement and confident that
rational, scientific analysis will, in the end, provide the grounds for consen-
sus (Radaelli, 1999, p. 37). Technocrats are meant to deal with technical ques-
tions, which are questions about the most appropriate and efficient means of
governance. There remain of course questions related to the ends of govern-
ance, which cannot be reduced to questions related to means, that is, technical
questions. Governance exclusively by technocrats would require technocrats
198 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
to decide on or assume knowledge of the ends of governance as well. Techno-

crats, in other words, would have to behave politically anyway, while – unlike
politicians – ‘they would be able to draw upon a stock of legitimacy fueled by
competence’ (Radaelli, 1999, p. 27).
Second, European governance would be legitimate insofar as democratic
and judicial safeguards would be in place, in the context of the ‘Community
method’. The high authority would propose policy and issue regulations, in
short, govern. However, democratic oversight would be sufficiently secured,
firstly, through the Assembly, the members of which would be drawn from
national parliaments; secondly, through the filter of the Council of Ministers,
which would ensure that the voice of national governments would be heard in
the process of European governance. Judicial oversight would be undertaken
by the European Court of Justice to ensure that governance was conducted
according to the rule of law (Lord and Magnette, 2002, pp. 3–5). Clearly,
legitimacy for all European institutions was meant to be indirect; to depend
totally on the legitimacy of national institutions and on the fact that national
parliaments had agreed to confer powers to the European institutions (Neun-
reither, 1994, p. 312).
Among the normative criteria by which the legitimacy of governance in
Europe was meant to be judged, the ultimate criterion in the Monnet concep-
tion was efficiency, not democracy, ‘output’, rather than ‘input’ legitimacy
(Scharpf, 1998). Europe’s ‘input’ legitimacy would be indirect and therefore
weak, at least as long as EU citizens did not attribute autonomous democratic
status and validity to the European level of governance. ‘Output’ legitimacy
would need to be robust enough to compensate for this weakness. The Union
would basically be legitimate as long as it clocked up results. In the words of
Commission President Prodi: ‘At the end of the day, what interests them [EU
citizens] is not who solves these problems, but the fact that they are being
solved (Prodi, 1999).
The Commission. An understanding of what would make the high authority

itself legitimate can be regarded as twofold. First, the high authority had a
special place in the Monnet plan: it was meant to provide the impetus for
integration. Being the ‘motor of integration’ was the first task of the high
authority and its institutional successor. This role, whose institutional em-
bodiment was and continues to be the Commission’s exclusive right of initia-
tive, is justifiable in terms of the responsible qualities of the members of the
technocratic elite who compose it: qualities like reliability, efficiency, trust-
worthiness, prudence and coherence (Tsakatika, 2003). Even when national
governments were reluctant, even if national publics were in the dark, Euro-
pean integration would need to be continuously stimulated. A reliable and
trustworthy nucleus of people would be needed to propose new projects, put

forward new ideas, see new opportunities for co-operation as they emerged
from the interdependence resulting from the integration process and efficiently
forge ahead with new plans on a continuous basis. They alone would be able
to see the overall picture and take the long-term view, which would require
prudence. Finally, they alone would be able to ensure coherence in the proc-
ess of European integration and in the context of European governance. Inso-
far as the members of the technocratic elite guiding the process of European
integration could be considered responsible, as individuals and as a group,
the ‘motor of integration’ role could be considered legitimate in normative
terms.
Second, the high authority was meant to be the guardian of the ‘common
European interest’. In the long run, the common European interest was al-
ways presented in terms of peace and prosperity. However, decisions on the
way in which that interest was to be practically specified, articulated and pur-
sued in the day-to-day operation of the Community, would not be subject to
some kind of democratic majoritarian mechanism, but to a continuous exer-
cise in interest mediation and conciliation. Clearly, this mechanism would
need an appropriate mediator. The underlying argument that can be derived
from the Monnet conception would be that the high authority would be best
equipped to play such a role, for two reasons.
One would be its impartiality between contrasting political views, con-
flicting national interests and interest group pressures. Politicians are bound
to be short-sighted and self-seeking, as they are subject to the electoral mech-
anism. It makes for better governance to take the impartial, that is, the overall,
and long-term view of the technocrat. States are bound to pursue their own
national interests. Given power asymmetries between smaller and larger states,
what would be needed is an impartial arbiter between those interests, that can
facilitate compromises based on what is fair, rather than on who is more pow-
erful, and to keep power asymmetries from growing and threatening the foun-
dations of solidarity and community of interest between the national partners
(Temple Lang, 2002). Similarly, impartial mediation between the social part-
ners and various interest groups would also be required for reasons of fair-
ness, for peace in industrial relations and to safeguard European economic
co-operation in general. The legitimacy of the Commission as guardian of the
common European interest would crucially depend on its credibility as an
impartial mediator from all these points of view. To this day, the oath of inde-
pendence taken by the Commission before the European Court of Justice on
appointment and the fact that the Commissioners are nominated by Member
States but censured by the EP, are meant to secure and express the Commission’s

200 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
independence from national or private interests and from political-ideological

bias.
The other reason why the Commission would be an appropriate mediator
would be the position in which its policy-proposing role would place it. through
that role, the Commission would be the Community’s centre of expertise as,
in order to make proposals, it would need considerable input from experts. It
would also be the Community’s sympathetic ear: it would be the first place
where governments, groups, trade unions, etc. would take their grievances
and requests. Consequently, the Commission as policy-proposer would be the
best informed European actor in terms of expertise, but also in terms of what
goes on where, who wants what, what one would be willing to give up in
order to get what, and so on. Knowledge, then, technical and political, apart
from impartiality, would legitimate the Commission as most appropriate me-
diator between competing interests, and therefore, its role of guardian of the
common European interest.
This meant that the Commission could represent that interest to third par-
ties, safeguard it against rule-breakers and see to it that measures leading to
its realization are indeed carried out. The official role of the Commission in
the Community’s external relations, its role of ‘guardian of the Treaties’ and
its management role, can all be understood in this framework.
While the Commission’s guardian role can be seen to be linked to the
process of European governance, the motor of integration role is not only
linked, but also conditional on the process of integration itself. To play the
role of motor of integration would be legitimate only as long as the process of
integration was seen to be necessary. Were European unity to be achieved, in
other words, the Commission’s role as motor of integration would not be le-
gitimate, simply because it would be fulfilled, and therefore, there would be
no further need for it. By consequence, not only the Commission’s role as
motor of integration, but also the Community method itself, where the Com-
mission’s right of initiative is crucial to the overall process of governance,
would enjoy legitimacy only as long as the process of integration were re-
quired. On the contrary, the role of guardian of the common European inter-
est and the tasks of external representation, guardian of the Treaties and policy
management would be legitimately exercised for as long as there was a need
for European governance.
The Constitutional Decade: New Claims to Legitimacy

Integration. In the context of the discussions that led to the Maastricht Treaty,
questions relating to the legitimacy of the very process of integration were
raised seriously for the first time in the history of the Union. Member States
that had been outvoted in delicate issues in the internal market, and regions
that had seen their powers encroached by Union intervention, were keen to
raise the issue of putting limits to European integration (Pollack, 2000, p.
525; Donahue and Pollack, 2001, pp. 110–11). It can be said that the substan-
tive underlying argument against the legitimacy of further integration as such,
was based on diversity: it was based on fears that integration in general and
Community measures, regulations in particular, had undesirable homogeniz-
ing effects on national (and subnational) diversity (Banús, 2002). The claim
can be seen to be that integration as such should be considered legitimate
insofar as it respects national–subnational diversity, the latter constituting a
value in itself, to be accepted and maintained (Weiler, 2001).
Second, the legitimacy of the way in which integration was taking place
came under fire. Integration ‘by stealth’ (Hayward, 1996) or competence ‘creep’
(Pollack, 1995) was criticized for arbitrariness. What came under attack was
the idea that power and authority to decide on entire areas and sectors of
policy could continue to be centralized at the European level with no convinc-
ing public justification of the legitimate need to do so. Furthermore, a second
negative by-product of integration ‘by stealth’ was considered to be that it
brought about confusion concerning the level of governance that had compe-
tence to decide in different policy areas. Integration (or further integration)
was not to be considered legitimate unless it was publicly justifiable and did
not create confusion about ‘who does what’ in the Union. It was these short-
comings in the modality of integration – among others – that subsidiarity was
aimed at addressing. Subsidiarity managed to address, to some extent, only
the first type of legitimacy concern, that of public justifiability, since it was
incorporated into the process of European governance in the form of proce-
dural safeguards in legislation (van Kersbergen and Verbeek, 1994; de Búrca,
1999; Lazer and Mayer-Schoenberger, 2001). However, it soon became obvi-
ous that subsidiarity was not enough to provide adequate answers to the ‘who
does what’ question.
Governance. The first negative popular responses to the Treaty of Maastricht

signalled the end of the ‘permissive consensus’ that sustained European gov-
ernance and set alarm bells ringing at national and European centres. Europe
was charged with a democratic deficit which weighed heavily on its legitima-
cy. According to the standard version, the fact that another level of govern-
ance has been added on top of the national level, is a problem for democracy,
because decision-making becomes more distant from citizens, while each cit-
izen sees his or her influence in decision-making drastically diminished (Weiler
et al., 1995). Furthermore, given that the Union’s legitimacy is not only indi-
rect (depending on the legitimacy of national institutions) but also direct (since
MEPs are directly elected), it was claimed that both aspects of this ‘dual’
202 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
legitimacy are problematic (Neunreither, 1994, p. 312). At the European lev-

el, linguistic and cultural diversity render ‘the creation of a public discourse
within which political accountability is discharged an inherently precarious
exercise’ (Lehning and Weale 1997, p. 8).
This lack of parliamentary accountability and public debate in the Europe-
an Union is a problem for democracy not only at the European, but also at the
national level of government. This is because national executives, deciding
by majority at EU level, become more powerful vis-à-vis national legisla-
tures, national publics and national judiciaries, given that they can escape
their control (Weiler et al., 1995). Complexity, incomprehensibility and per-
ceived lack of openness and transparency in European governance, it was
argued, made things worse (Lodge, 1994). The claim for democratic legiti-
macy of the Union’s governance that was raised in the post-Maastricht de-
bate, can thus be said to have been made in terms of citizen empowerment,
parliamentary accountability and public debate, openness and understandability.
In the run-up to the European Convention, a different set of claims to legit-
imacy surfaced. The debate on multi-level governance in Europe that had
emerged since the mid-1990s in academic circles as an alternative to both the
intergovernmentalist and federalist paradigms, spread to the Commission’s
discourse through a long series of contacts with academics and NGOs and
through the work of the Forward Studies Unit which organized these contacts
(Magnette, 2003, p. 147). The governance debate served to give the tradition-
al Monnet formula for legitimating EU governance a good repackaging: ‘out-
put’ legitimacy was the strong point of EU governance as much as ever. It
would need to keep on delivering results if it wished to remain legitimate.
There were many different views on how that could be ensured. What was
perhaps the most sophisticated account was put forward by Fritz Scharpf. His
argument ran as follows: the Union has proved itself highly efficient in carry-
ing out projects like the completion of the internal market and the establish-
ment of the common currency. Yet, the very success of these projects seems to
have deprived Member State governments of the capacity to respond to new
challenges in several policy areas for which competence lies at the national
level, mainly social policy. At the same time, the Union’s institutions do not
have the appropriate instruments needed to replace national action (Scharpf,
2002a).
Similar problems can be discerned in the need to ensure common security
and defence as well as in dealing with the consequences of enlargement:
Member States cannot act effectively alone, but at the same time they will not
enable the Union to do it for them (Scharpf, 2002b). The reason is that, due to
the great national (and at times sub-national) diversity of interests, institu-
tions and policy legacies that divide them, Member States would not agree to
standard, uniform EU action in policy areas where such diversity is political-

ly salient (Scharpf, 2002b). The real problem with European governance is
not the EU’s traditionally weak democratic credentials (‘input’ legitimacy),
but its diminishing problem-solving efficiency (‘output’ legitimacy) that has
always compensated for weak ‘input’ legitimacy. So the way in which EU
governance could recover ‘output’ legitimacy at this point would be by relax-
ing the uniformity requirement, thus allowing for national (and subnational)
‘legitimate diversity’ to be brought to bear on EU decision-making (Scharpf,
2003). That would mean strengthening EU governance by overcoming objec-
tions to diversity, and in this way enabling it to deal with the new challenges
that states alone cannot handle, regaining its ‘output’ legitimacy advantage
over separate state action. Respect for diversity emerged as a claim for the
legitimacy not only of integration, but also of governance.
The Commission. Among the three principal European institutions, the Euro-
pean Commission and its role in the governance of the European Union was
undoubtedly the most vulnerable to criticism. The Commission was targeted
because it was considered the main agent of ‘creeping competence’. The sub-
sidiarity debate brought up the question of the conditions under which further
integration was indeed justified, and therefore, implicitly, had the potential to
bring up another question: whether and under what conditions the Union still
needed a motor of integration. Further down the line, if responsibility had
been the legitimating criterion of the Commission’s role of motor of integra-
tion, it was dealt a severe blow in March 1999 when the Santer Commission
resigned, charged with fraud, mismanagement and nepotism, under pressure
from the European Parliament (Macmullen, 1999; Costantinesco, 2000; van
Gerven, 2000).
The Commission was also the most vulnerable of the institutions to criti-
cisms targeting the homogenizing tendencies of the process of European inte-
gration, at the level of the process of integration, as well as at the level of the
process of governance. Its role as motor of integration, manifested in the ex-
clusive right of initiative that the Commission enjoyed in the Community
pillar, as well as the fact that it could issue regulations, an instrument used
largely during the completion of the single market, made it a target for all
those who would like to see less centralization, less homogenization, in some
cases, less or no integration tout court.
Criticisms of democracy were also, naturally, particularly severe vis-à-vis
the Commission, as the Commission is not a democratically elected or effec-
tively accountable institution. The Commission has an agenda-setting and
priority-setting power which it employs for enlarging the scope of Union com-
petence, as well as for advancing commonly accepted policy proposals (Cram,
204 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
1994; Peterson, 1995; Laffan, 1997). How can an independent and unaccount-
able technocratic elite be allowed to play a political role that is so important?
The Commission was also the institution that was most vulnerable to criti-
cisms of openness and transparency. It was perceived to be the most intrans-
parent and obscure EU institution (Lodge, 1994). It is against this background
of ideas and arguments concerning the legitimacy of European integration,
European governance and the Commission itself, that the White Paper must
be read.
II. Legitimacy in the White Paper: Continuity and Change

Does the White Paper on Governance – which can be taken to reflect the
Commission’s ‘institutional’ point of view – imply or evoke normative argu-
ments from the Monnet conception in order to legitimize European integra-
tion, the European Union and the Commission itself in the present? It has
been argued that if the proposals in the White Paper on Governance, as well
as those of its preceding draft released in May 2001 (COM, 2001a), were not
a raw expression of institutional ‘self-interest’, they certainly were an expres-
sion of the Commission’s institutional culture, which incorporates ‘techno-
cratic spirit’ (Magnette, 2001, p. 31) and ‘bare pragmatic functionalism’
(Weiler, 2001, p. 209). This can be shown to be the case to a considerable
extent. However, it can also be shown that the White Paper has indeed tried to
deal with some of the legitimacy concerns that have been raised since the
early 1990s. Exactly how and how convincingly the White Paper puts togeth-
er the two sets of normative concerns is what will be explored in the next
three sections.
The Legitimacy of European Integration

Integration as Such. The White Paper starts with the declaration that the proc-
ess of European integration has so far been a success:
European integration has delivered fifty years of stability, peace and eco-
nomic prosperity. It has helped to raise standards of living, built an internal
market and strengthened the Union’s voice in the world. It has achieved
results that would not have been possible by individual Member States act-
ing on their own. (COM, 2001b, p. 7)
Clearly, the view that European integration has been instrumentally valuable
to the achievement of the ends of peace and prosperity, and therefore, legiti-
mate, is confirmed. What is also confirmed is that integration continues to be
needed, and therefore legitimate, in order for these valuable aims to be achieved
to the full, in the context of a more comprehensive and up-to-date vision of
European unity. The White Paper not only reminds us of the original worth-
while aims of integration, but goes on to extend them to ‘peace, growth, em-
ployment and social justice’ (COM, 2001b, p. 26), and to propose that the
Union’s ‘long-term’ policy aims could be subsumed under the heading of
‘sustainable development’, and articulated in terms of ‘improving human cap-
ital, knowledge and skills; strengthening both social cohesion and competi-
tiveness; meeting the environmental challenge; supporting territorial diversity;
and contributing to regional peace and stability’ (COM, 2001b, p. 28).
There is a new element in the White Paper not concerned with the instru-
mental character of the legitimacy of integration, but the substance of the
valuable end of integration, which renders it legitimate. This element is the
inclusion of diversity in the valuable aims of the process of integration. What
this means is that an end state of affairs where peace and prosperity prevail,
but diversity has disappeared, is not acknowledged as valuable and therefore
legitimate. At the level of principle, a distinction is drawn between unity and
uniformity. The White Paper is cautious in claiming that the original spirit of
integration was ‘to integrate the peoples of Europe, fully respecting their in-
dividual national identities’ (COM, 2001b, p. 32). The enemy is national sov-
ereignty, not national identity; the capacity of states to decide autonomously
in self-regarding terms, not the identity and sense of belonging of their
citizens.
Unity and Diversity. Inevitably, if we take it that diversity is a constitutive

part of the valuable end of integration, that is, European unity, which is what
renders such integration legitimate, a problem arises: if the aim is to achieve
unity while allowing for diversity, how can that be assured in practice? This is
not an easy question to answer in general, and all the more so in the case of
the European Union (Kraus, 2004). The difficulty is reflected not only at the
point of constitutional choice, the moment at which one thinks of the dramat-
ic consequences the choice of ‘freezing’ the process of integration into any
form of federation or confederation would be likely to have in the long run.
The difficulty is seen also at the point of choosing governance arrangements,
where instruments such as, regulations, framework directives and the open
method of co-ordination, could be said to allow for different degrees of diver-
sity in the short to medium term.
While the White Paper’s affirmation of diversity as one of the valuable
aims of integration would seem to exclude the possibility that the legitimiz-
ing end of European unity could take the form of a unitary state, it is not at all
clear what choice of constitutional arrangements it would advocate along the
federal–confederal dimension. What is much more telling and much more
helpful in drawing conclusions on where the White Paper stands in a diversity–
206 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
uniformity continuum, is the choice of governance modes that take prefer-

ence in the White Paper.
The White Paper proposes limitation on the use of regulations to cases
where there is a clear ‘need for uniform application and legal certainty across
the Union’ and greater use of framework directives in the process of govern-
ance (COM, 2001b, p. 20), which allow for more diversity than regulations,
since national executives are left with wide choice on how to transpose and
implement them. Yet, the open method of co-ordination, the mode of govern-
ance that most respects ‘legitimate diversity’ (Goetschy, 1999; Hodson and
Maher, 2001; de la Porte and Pochet, 2001; Scott and Trubek, 2002) is treated
with suspicion. The White Paper emphasizes that the open method of co-
ordination ‘should not be used when legislative action under the Community
method is possible’ (COM, 2001b, p. 22). The fear is that the open method of
co-ordination could be used to prevent or to hinder the communitarization of
certain policy fields, or to reverse it in others, thus working against unity
(Ardy and Begg, 2002; Goetschy, 2001).
What we can make of this is that, in the Commission’s worldview, the
extent to which uniting Europe should allow for the imposition of uniformity
is probably greater than the White Paper would let us think at first glance. The
idea that ‘real’ unity comes with a price to be paid in uniformity is more
deeply rooted than the idea that unity can allow for considerable diversity.
The Modality of Integration. The White Paper departs considerably from the
Monnet conception in the understanding of what renders the modality of inte-
gration legitimate. First of all, it puts forward a different version of how inte-
gration should proceed. The White Paper questions the suitability of
step-by-step integration as it has taken place so far, by criticizing its negative
effects on the coherence of the European project:
The step by step integration, which has characterized the Union’s develop-
ment, has tended to slice policies into sectoral strands with different objec-
tives and different tools: over time, the capacity to ensure coherence has
diminished. (COM, 2001b, p. 28)
What must be pursued, according to the White Paper, continues to be specific,
concrete projects, but these projects must be broader than they have been so
far, more connected and more long term (COM, 2001b, p. 28). In other words,
integration should continue to be task-oriented and gradual, but compatible
with the overall coherence of the Union’s political project. Moreover, any
further steps towards integration must be publicly justified, in terms of sub-
sidiarity and proportionality (COM, 2001b, pp. 10–11).
Second, the major novelty in the White Paper, with respect to the under-
standing of what renders the modality of integration legitimate, is the
acceptance of the need for a constitutional framework for the Union. This is
clear despite the fact that the White Paper claims that the changes it proposes
would not require treaty amendment (COM, 2001b, p. 8), and despite the
claim that the Commission has been, rather unwillingly, ‘drawn into’ the dis-
cussion on the future of Europe’s ‘organization’ (COM, 2001b, p. 34). The
White Paper answers questions of constitutional import when it makes pro-
posals concerning the horizontal (separation of the executive from the legis-
lature, making the Commission the Union’s sole executive, making the EP
and Council the Union’s co-legislators) and vertical (multi-level governance,
shared, rather than exclusive competencies allocated according to clear rules,
between Member States and the Union) distribution of powers in the EU (COM,
2001b, pp. 29–31, 33–5). The reason why the White Paper considers the con-
stitutional approach desirable is that this produces clear rules about ‘who does
what in Europe’.
Despite the altogether considerable departure of the White Paper from the
Monnet tradition, there is a also point of continuity: that of considering legit-
imate that modality of integration which is better at achieving its valuable
ends. The legitimacy of the constitution depends on its suitability as an in-
strument to achieve the valuable ends of integration, rather than on its poten-
tially reflecting these valuable ends and as such having a value in itself. The
White Paper takes the big step of accepting the legitimacy of a constitution
for Europe, considering it an instrument that not only is not at odds with, but
reinforces the new version of gradualism it puts forward. The combination of
the two instruments is better than the traditional Monnet method (and – it
goes without saying – from separate national action for the achievement of
the valuable ends of integration.
The overall understanding of the criteria according to which integration
and its modality can be considered legitimate, as it emerges from the White
Paper, can be summarized as follows: further integration is still to be consid-
ered legitimate insofar as the valuable ends of European unity have not been
achieved. However, such integration must be publicly justified, must not cre-
ate problems for the coherence of the overall project of the Union and, finally,
it must be pursued against the background of a constitutional arrangement,
which establishes clear rules for competence allocation.
Clarity and Change. The problem here is this: if both change (required by
further integration) and clarity in the allocation of competencies (which would
be brought about by a constitution), are criteria of legitimacy for integration,
to what extent are they compatible? This is one of the big contemporary ques-
tions in the study of political organization. Legitimacy requires clarity in the
allocation of powers, but increased complexity (which brings the need for all
208 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
actors and levels of governance to share most competencies), and the increased
need to adapt to changing circumstances (which brings the need for different
issues to be dealt with by different levels of governance in time), renders
clarity practically impossible (Nicolaïdis, 2001, pp. 442–4). The fashionable
answer, which the White Paper seems to adopt, is that, even in established
federal systems, we should partly give up on understanding legitimacy in sta-
tist terms, and instead consider it ‘bound up with the collective achievement
of widely shared objectives that may change over time’. We must allow for as
much flexibility in competence allocation as possible against the background
of a constitutional arrangement that tells us how we should go about manag-
ing change. This is all the more valid in the context of the legitimacy of Euro-
pean integration, by definition a dynamic process of change (Börzel and Risse,
2000; Nicolaïdis, 2001).
Altogether, this solution could mean privileging change over clarity: ac-
cepting the need for continuous ‘constitutional’ change as a fait accompli and
trying to accommodate it in our political arrangements may be the only feasi-
ble solution we have available, and we may even consider it legitimate in
terms of efficiency. This being the case, the fact remains that continuous change
may per se come with a lack of clarity. This is because there is a sense in
which the pace of the process of rule-changing must take into account the
pace of the process of rule-learning. If three generations of Europeans have
been unable to cope with the rules in Europe, this must have had something to
do with the fact that these rules have been ever-changing.
The Legitimacy of European Governance

Efficiency. The White Paper reaffirms the Monnet principle that the legitima-
cy of European governance should mainly be judged in terms of its superior
efficiency in governance at the national level. The argument for the superior
efficiency of EU governance continues to be made in terms of technocratic
governance. The White Paper’s emphasis on expert and specialist advice; the
exclusion of political parties from the category of civil society organizations
(Steinberg, 2001); the understanding of the Union’s political aim as an en-
semble of few well-defined projects (Weiler, 2001, pp. 208–9), are clear ex-
amples of the Monnet legacy of technocratic governance. So is the following
statement:
Given the deep level of integration already achieved, people have similar
expectations for the Union as they have for domestic politics and political
institutions. But the Union cannot develop and deliver policy in the same
way as a national government; it must build partnerships and rely on a wide
variety of actors. Expectations must be met in different ways. (COM, 2001b,
p. 32)
In other words, the Union cannot do politics, it must meet citizens’ expecta-
tions by other means: governance based on expertise and interest concilia-
tion, rather than political conflict. It is still considered that technocratic
governance is what ensures efficiency, what delivers results.
Yet, the White Paper reflects a rather limited understanding of the fact that
the technocratic vision alone will no longer suffice if EU governance is to be
more efficient in addressing the new challenges that lie ahead than nation-
states acting on their own. That technocratic vision would need to be updated
to incorporate claims to ‘legitimate diversity’. It has been argued that taking
‘legitimate diversity’ seriously into account from this point of view would
require, for example, combining framework directives with the open method
of co-ordination (Scharpf, 2002a). As mentioned above, the White Paper clearly
takes the view that open co-ordination should not be used where the Commu-
nity legislates.
In sum, the White Paper replicates the Monnet understanding of the supe-
rior efficiency of EU governance when compared to separate national action
as the primary claim to its legitimacy. It also seems to adopt the established
conception of technocratic (non-political) efficiency. However, it fails to in-
corporate the claims for respecting ‘legitimate diversity’ in that conception.
Democracy. At first sight, it would seem that there are differences between
the way that the democratic legitimacy of European governance was under-
stood in the context of the Monnet conception and the way in which it is
treated in the White Paper. First, because, while the ‘dual’ democratic legiti-
macy principle is adopted and enriched, it is acknowledged that there are
problems with its operation in practice and it is suggested that improvements
be made. Second, there are certain elements in the White Paper which may
seem to suggest an altogether new understanding of democratic legitimacy.
Finally, it may be the case that the balance between democracy and efficien-
cy, which in the context of the Monnet conception leaned heavily towards
efficiency, may be different in the White Paper. It will be argued that in all
three counts, change is only rhetoric: the Monnet conception is dominant.
The ‘Dual’ Legitimacy Principle. The commitment to the ‘dual’ legitimacy

principle is manifested in the emphasis on maintaining, renewing, refocusing
the Community method (COM 2001b, p. 8); it is enriched through the pro-
posal to make the Council and European Parliament co-legislators, which
reflects the idea that democratic legitimacy in the Union depends on the equal
representation and decision-making power of people and peoples in the Euro-
pean Union and its governance. Improvement of the operation of the princi-
ple is called for through the invitation of those involved to take appropriate
210 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
action. Member States’ governments are accused of trying their best to avoid
responsibility at home for the positions they take at the Union level; however,
no concrete institutional proposals are made about how that could be avoided
(for example, making public the Council’s deliberations when it is legislat-
ing). The European Parliament is also being blamed for not doing more in
terms of representing the Union’s citizens; it is invited to promote political
debate on European issues, rather than insist on the details of ‘accounting’. In
short, the White Paper, notes that there the lack of public debate and effective
accountability procedures are indeed a problem for the ‘dual’ legitimacy prin-
ciple, but makes no real proposals to deal with the situation.
New Democratic Elements? The White Paper’s proposals are all explicitly
directed at making the European Union, its governance, political project and
policies more understandable, attractive and directly acceptable to citizens. It
may seem that the new concern with citizen consensus could signal the en-
richment of the conception of ‘dual’ democratic legitimacy meant to be se-
cured through the Community method with an understanding of democratic
legitimacy in which citizens had an active role to play in European govern-
ance. Is this the case? The answer is no. What the new concern with citizens
points to is the change in the extent to which citizen consensus on the ‘output’
side can be taken for granted. The overall response is that citizens must be
made to understand better what the Union is all about and what it offers them.
The possibility that once citizens ‘understand’ they might still not be willing
to grant legitimacy to the Union, is not even contemplated (Wincott, 2001,
pp. 900–1). In other words, the fact that citizens are mentioned does not mean
that citizens are meant to be empowered. Despite the fact that the importance
of direct popular support for European governance is acknowledged, this is
done from a top-down perspective, which views citizens in a passive role
whose consensus, or rather, lack of protest, is meant to render the final prod-
uct of governance more acceptable. The same can be said of the way in which
the White Paper conceptualizes the role of organized civil society in the legit-
imization of the results of governance (Curtin, 2001, pp. 149–50).
The Democracy–Efficiency Balance. In the context of the Monnet concep-

tion, the legitimacy of European governance ultimately depended on techno-
cratic efficiency, understood in terms of producing the best result possible
according to considerations of cost and benefit, speed and equal considera-
tion of all interests involved. The White Paper continues to evoke efficiency
in this sense, but it also introduces three democratic principles which, at first
sight, seem to be placed on an equal footing with efficiency: participation,

accountability and openness. Could this mean that efficiency is now only one
consideration among others in the legitimacy of European governance?
Leaving aside the question of whether the list of democratic principles
introduced alongside efficiency is comprehensive enough, or according to
which criteria these principles and not others were put forward, we must try
to explore what happens when different principles conflict or lead to different
institutional choices (Føllesdal, 2003):
• The White Paper does not address the principal openness-related prob-
lem in the Union, which is the fact that the Council of Ministers
legislates in secret (Lodge, 1994). Clearly, to render Council meetings
open is not only difficult, but it may also be undesirable in terms of
decision-making efficiency (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 1997). The
White Paper does not demand that such openness be pursued.
• The principle of participation is clearly prey to efficiency: what is
envisaged is not time-consuming but involving citizen participation, nor
is it the ‘institutionalization of protest’, but consultation of organized
civil society groups who are meant to save time and effort in the
governance process (Magnette, 2003, pp. 148–50).
• Efficiency concerns can be seen to prevail over accountability concerns.
The way that the problem of democratic accountability is dealt with in
the White Paper is unsatisfactory (Möllers, 2001, p. 57). The abolition
of the comitology check is requested, but what is proposed to replace it
as a checking mechanism is not clear (Steinberg, 2001, pp. 170–1). What
the Commission really wants is a virtually free hand in policy execution,
and this, allegedly, for the sake of efficiency.
It seems that efficiency (understood in the traditional technocratic sense, not
updated with claims for ‘legitimate diversity’) continues, in fact, to reign su-
preme over all other principles of legitimate governance in the Union. The
greatest part of the White Paper’s proposals are dedicated to making EU gov-
ernance more efficient. The White Paper emphasizes efficiency over the Un-
ion’s sometimes slow and cumbersome, but democratically necessary,
decision-making procedures (Kohler-Koch, 2001, pp. 179–80).
The Legitimacy of the European Commission

What the White Paper Does. The White Paper not only continues to insist that
the Commission’s role of ‘initiating policy and steering the long term agenda’
(COM, 2001b, p. 29), is legitimate on responsibility grounds, but puts for-
ward a multitude of proposals aimed at strengthening it. The Commission’s
initiating role should be focused on strategic, long-term objectives (COM,
2001b, p. 32). This should be done by focusing on primary legislation (COM,
212 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
2001b, p. 21); by measures to strengthen its capacity for policy-setting and

strategic planning (COM, 2001b, pp. 28–9). The Commission itself should
prepare the ground for the European Council to decide on such long-term
objectives (COM, 2001b, p. 29); the Commission must be allowed to with-
draw proposals when ‘inter-institutional bargaining’ undermines the original
objectives of a proposal (COM, 2001b, p. 22).
It is argued that the White Paper’s proposals to focus the Commission’s
right of initiative on the Union’s long-term policy aims make it possible for
the Commission to become a better mediator, and therefore, a better guardian
of the European common interest (COM, 2001b, pp. 33–4). The fact that this
role continues to be perceived as a mediating role is clear. The Commission
continues to consider itself as the appropriate mediator between national in-
terests. This is clear from the fact that it asks for the strategic mediating role
on the Union’s long-term objectives before the European Council decides on
them; the fact that it considers itself impartial between interest groups and
wants to strengthen impartiality is clear from the extensive proposals on mak-
ing expert advice more reliable and consulting civil society reliably. It is clear
also that the Commission continues to claim political neutrality. Fostering
European political debate on policy issues is what somebody else, namely,
the national and European parliaments, as well as national governments, should
be doing. Concerning the knowledge requirement of the legitimacy of the
Commission’s role as guardian of the common European interest, this contin-
ues to be perceived as such and proposals are put forward to improve it. Ex-
pert and civil society input, measures to improve its role as policy proposer as
a whole, are in this direction.
The White Paper naturally defends the Commission’s institutional roles of
guardian of the treaties, external representation and policy execution, the le-
gitimacy of which stems from its more general role of guardian of the general
European interest. It advances a multitude of proposals to enhance these roles
and exercise them more effectively. The clear division between executive (Com-
mission) and legislative (EP-Council) powers is aimed at defending the Com-
mission’s role of policy execution from encroachment by comitology, and at
lessening the Commission’s workload by allowing agencies (controlled) and
national administrations to do the work of implementation and allowing it to
focus on the essentials (COM, 2001b, pp. 18, 24, 31). It also puts forward
proposals to strengthen the Commission’s roles of external representation
(COM, 2001b, p. 27) and guardian of the treaties (COM, 2001b, p. 25).
What the White Paper Avoids Doing. The real democratic lacuna in the oper-
ation of the Commission remains the way it exercises its political role: guid-
ing the process of integration and exercising policy-making influence through
agenda-setting means doing politics. In order to pass the test of democratic

legitimacy, doing politics requires something other than the responsible qual-
ities of rulers, however much these qualities may be desirable: at the least, it
requires democratic choice over who governs, and the possibility of ‘throw[ing]
the rascals out’ (Weale, 1999, p. 43). The problem is that, being subject to
democratic choice, means turning political; and turning political could at first
sight be thought to compromise the Commission’s impartiality, one of its core
claims to legitimacy in the context of the process of governance (Temple Lang,
2002).
Political elections fought on European issues could be regarded as the key
democratic requirement, with Commission candidates competing for office
on distinct electoral platforms (Hix, 1998, pp. 52–3). This would need to be
accompanied by ‘presidentialization’ or ‘parliamentarization’ of the Commis-
sion, whereby the former would require direct election of the President, and
the latter would require changes in the ways in which the President and the
members of the College are censured and dismissed, but also appointed and
enabled in relation to the European Parliament (Judge and Earnshaw, 2002).
The White Paper proposes neither a presidential nor a parliamentary model,
which means that it makes no substantial move in the direction of democra-
tizing the role of the Commission. Clearly, had the White Paper seriously
attempted to do so, it could have posed a threat to the two pillars of legitimacy
that the Commission traditionally appeals to: responsibility and impartiality.
Finally, had the White Paper announced the end of integration and called
for a constitution expressing the Union’s finalité politique, it would have put
in jeopardy the Community method and the Commission’s role of motor of
integration (and therefore its exclusive role of initiative), since the legitimacy
of both is conditional on the need for integration. Had it announced the pas-
sage from technocratic governance to fully blown democratic governance, it
might have called into question the legitimacy of its role of guardian of the
common European interest since, in order to determine what such interest
consists of, Europe might (or might not) decide that it does not need impartial
mediation, but politics. But the White Paper was careful to do neither.
Conclusion
President Prodi’s presentation of the Commission’s proposals for institution-
al reform to the Plenary of the Convention on 5 December 2002 was received
with little enthusiasm. It became known that the so-called ‘Penelope’ docu-
ment did not command the support of the entire College of Commissioners.
There was no official discussion of this presentation in the Plenary, and little
mention of the proposals in the discussion that did follow. Peter Hain, the UK
214 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
government representative, probably expressing the the feeling of many con-

vention members, characterized the contribution as ‘disappointing’ (Conven-
tion Plenary, 5 December 2002). If this article has achieved what it was meant
to achieve, that is, set out the normative background to the Commission’s
position at the outset of the official constitutional debate, then some light may
have been shed on some of the reasons why. Quite apart from the issue of the
Commission being on the losing end of the institutional balance for some
time now (Majone, 2002; Stacey, 2003; Kassim and Menon, 2004) and in-
deed before any presentational, tactical or diplomatic mistakes could be made
in the Convention, the position on which the Commission had entered the
constitutional debate was weak, unsettled and defensive.
The White Paper on Governance incorporated an attempt to articulate a
formula of normative legitimacy that would appear to reconcile legitimacy
claims coming from the Monnet tradition with the new legitimacy claims
coming from democracy and diversity. That this reconciliation is necessary is
well known not only to the Commission, but to all EU actors: the EU is rapid-
ly acquiring the characteristics of a polity, which means that its governance is
expected to be democratic as well as that its executive is expected to be dem-
ocratically legitimated; it is increasingly less acceptable that European inte-
gration proceeds without publicly sanctioned limits, that European governance
relies on its efficiency alone and that the Commission acts politically while
being able to count on the legitimacy credentials of a bureaucracy. The real
issue before the authors of the White Paper was therefore not whether this
reconciliation was needed, but how best to go about it.
To the careful reader, it is evident that the White Paper and its proposals
revealed no radical shift in the Commission’s worldview of what renders Eu-
ropean integration, European governance and its own roles legitimate. In the
last instance, though at different degrees, the Commission would still priori-
tize uniformity over diversity; flexibility over clarity; efficiency over democ-
racy; lofty neutrality over politics. In terms of principle, in other words, the
Monnet conception of legitimacy is ever present; less present in the norma-
tive claims to legitimacy that the White Paper makes for European integra-
tion, where diversity is acknowledged as one of the valuable aims of integration
and where a new, more constitution-friendly type of gradualism is adopted;
more present in the legitimacy claims for EU governance, where EU govern-
ance is understood to remain legitimate only as long as it is more efficient
than national action, and where technocratic efficiency retains primacy over
democracy, without being updated to take ‘legitimate diversity’ into account;
most present in the legitimacy claims that the Commission makes for its own
roles.

What this means is that, while some thought was indeed put into reconcil-
ing the two sets of claims, and some steps were indeed taken in this direction,
these steps were not sufficient, particularly those concerning the legitimacy
of EU governance and the legitimacy of the Commission’s roles. At the level
of governance, the intention was to keep to the formula of the primacy of
‘output’ legitimacy in the legitimation of EU governance. Yet in choosing
modes of governance there was a reluctance to adopt solutions that would
continue to make this possible in the light of future challenges, such as
Scharpf’s proposal to generalize the use of framework directives combined
with open co-ordination.
This was not compensated with effective proposals to bolster ‘input’ legit-
imacy, which would require, among other things, that the Commission re-
think the legitimating basis of its roles. The Commission could either have
made a choice between politicization and impartiality, reconsidering one of
its two principal roles (motor of integration and guardian of the common Eu-
ropean interest) and choosing its allies in the constitutional debate according-
ly, or it might have put forward new justifications for both roles, updating
their scope and content, striking a new balance between them and putting
forward new sui generis institutional solutions to which no major EU actor
would have substantial objections. It is the latter solution that seems to have
been most called for.
Legitimacy in the European Union in the future may demand a politicized
and impartial European Commission. Politicization may well be required if
democratic ‘deepening’ of the Union is to take place. The European Parlia-
ment has indeed been successively strengthening its political control over the
Commission, as its role in the Santer Commission’s resignation and the Bar-
roso Commission’s approval has shown, and there are plenty of democracy-
based arguments why this is a desirable development. At the same time,
Commission impartiality seems more necessary than ever, given that the lat-
est round of enlargement has raised the number of small and medium-sized
Member States and increased diversity, thereby augmenting the need and de-
sirability of a neutral and knowledgeable institutional mediator between coun-
tries that insist on equal partnership in Europe as much as on retaining their
particular cultural and institutional characteristics. The real challenge ahead
lies in the formulation of pertinent institutional proposals for a renewed polit-
icized and impartial European Commission: politicized vis-à-vis Europe’s
emerging political forces, and impartial vis-à-vis Europe’s Member States,
old, new and prospective.

216 MYRTO TSAKATIKA
Correspondence:
Myrto Tsakatika
Department of International and European Economic Studies
Athens University of Economics and Business
Patision 76, Athens 10434, Greece
email: mtsaka@hotmail.com
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JCMS 2005 Volume 43. Number 1. pp.

Claims to Legitimacy: The European Commission

view, depending on whether we are interested, respectively, in the extent to

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

a particular conception of what renders European integration, European gov-

I. From Monnet to Maastricht: Different Claims to Legitimacy

The Monnet Conception of Legitimacy

Governance. Coming to the question of what arguments could be evoked for

to decide on or assume knowledge of the ends of governance as well. Techno-

The Commission. An understanding of what would make the high authority

trustworthy nucleus of people would be needed to propose new projects, put

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

independence from national or private interests and from political-ideological

The Constitutional Decade: New Claims to Legitimacy

Governance. The first negative popular responses to the Treaty of Maastricht

legitimacy are problematic (Neunreither, 1994, p. 312). At the European lev-

standard, uniform EU action in policy areas where such diversity is political-

II. Legitimacy in the White Paper: Continuity and Change

The Legitimacy of European Integration

Unity and Diversity. Inevitably, if we take it that diversity is a constitutive

uniformity continuum, is the choice of governance modes that take prefer-

The Legitimacy of European Governance

The ‘Dual’ Legitimacy Principle. The commitment to the ‘dual’ legitimacy

The Democracy–Efficiency Balance. In the context of the Monnet concep-

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Legitimacy of the European Commission

2001b, p. 21); by measures to strengthen its capacity for policy-setting and

agenda-setting means doing politics. In order to pass the test of democratic

government representative, probably expressing the the feeling of many con-

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

Kraus, P. (2004) ‘A Union of Peoples? Diversity and the Predicaments of a Multina-

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

Weiler, J.H.H. (2001) ‘The Commission as Eurosceptic: A Task-Oriented Commis-

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

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