European Diary, 7.9.2020: The EU is facing a serious “power struggle”. The European Parliament, the only European institution with European democratic legitimacy, does not want to bow to the dictates of the heads of government. The 750 billion euro economic stimulus package to curb the consequences of the Corona pandemic, which the EU Commission negotiated in July, was under bad luck right from the start: the agreement of the Commission majority with the stingy four, then five EU states around Austria and the Netherlands was bought at the expense of massive cuts in the EU budget elsewhere.
The EU parliamentarians of many factions do not want to resign themselves to this. For example, the “EU4Health” program of all things, which is intended to protect against cross-border health risks and make affordable medicines more readily available, is to be cut from 9.4 billion to 1.7 billion euros. Joint programs for research, education, climate protection and digitization are also to be cut. And so the scope for cross-border cooperation will be restricted rather than expanded. MEPs from the Greens, the Social Democrats, the Liberals and also the conservative People’s Party from various countries are quite prepared to make use of Parliament’s right of veto. The Green MEP Rasmus Andresen brings into play the possibility of passing only the aid package, but not the budget in this form, in order to increase the pressure now in the other direction. This includes including in the budget execution more serious sanctions against those member states that violate constitutional standards. The EU parliamentarians also demand that the EU’s own revenues should finally be increased seriously, through an effective plastic tax, through digital taxes or the taxation of cross-border profits of the technology giants.
The EU Parliament and Commission still have difficult negotiations ahead of them. The need of the EU Parliament to be pushed around by the “thrifty” heads of government is ending. Even the “turquoise” MPs from Austria have not shown much enthusiasm in the past about the anti-European line of their own Austrian government. But it remains to be seen whether the words of Othmar Karas, for example, will be followed by actions.