(Adnkronos) – Italy on Wednesday underlined its support for the direct election of a joint European Union Commission and Council president in a reform aimed at “strengthening politics”, slashing bureacracy and making the 27-member bloc a faster, more authoritative and effective international actor.
“The problem is Brussels bureaucracy; I know it well. I said so when I was a commissioner, I said so when I was (European Parliament) president, and I continue to say so,” foreign minister Antonio Tajani Tajani said on the sidelines of an event in Rome.
“Europe must be politically stronger and lighten the bureaucratic burden. There is too much bureaucracy, but politics must assert its role. We need a series of reforms,” he underlined.
“For sure, these reforms are aimed at strengthening politics, meaning more power for the European Parliament. I support the direct election of the Commission President and the Council President, who need to be the same person,” Tajani said.
Currently, an absolute majority of MEPs elects the president of the European Commission (the EU executive), whose candidacy is proposed by a qualified majority of EU heads of state and government (the European Council), based on the political make-up of the European Parliament after European elections due every five years. The candidate is typically chosen from the biggest parliamentary grouping and the post is held for a renewable five-year term.
A qualified majority of the European Council (the EU’s top decision-making body) currently elects its own president to a two-and-a-half-year term that can be renewed once.
Tajani’s proposed reform of the European Commission and European Council presidencies is part of his wider vision of a federal Europe, which includes increasing the use of majority voting to overcome vetoes by individual member states and fortifying the European Parliament’s legislative role.
Such a project however would require major changes to European Union treaties, which would need the unanimous backing of all member states and ratification by national parliaments.
