Carnegie Europe' Lehne: The Comeback of the European Commission

24 April 2023

A decade and a half of constant crises has gradually restructured the power dynamics in the EU institutions. The European Commission is now in the driver’s seat.

Since the outbreak of the eurozone crisis in 2009, the European Union (EU) has been in permanent crisis-management mode. That challenge was followed by mass inflows of refugees and migrants in 2015 and 2016, Brexit, tensions with the United States following the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the rule of law crisis in Hungary and Poland, the coronavirus pandemic, and the Russian aggression against Ukraine. All of this has taken place against the background of global warming, possibly the greatest threat of all. Confronting a series of major challenges has changed not only how the EU functions but also the relationship between the EU’s institutions, in particular the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament (EP), and the European Commission.¹ The European Council has become “the room where it happens,” the place where key decisions in the EU’s crisis responses are made, partly to the detriment of the role of the Council of Ministers. The EP—previously seen as the ascendant institution—has lost ground, as it was sidelined in most of the crisis-management work. By contrast, the European Commission has staged a comeback after several years in the doldrums; under the pressure of crisis, the EU needs to combine rulemaking with executive action, and the European Commission’s operational capacity and expertise have become indispensable. Its rise remains fragile, however, as some member states accept it only grudgingly and populist politicians across the continent are determined to fight it. There is always risk of a backlash. But in the longer term, the European Commission remains the most plausible source of leadership in an ever more complex and heterogeneous EU....

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