Making the EU institutions ready for the future, for pragmatic and democratic reasons
Interview with Damian Boeselager, Member of the European Parliament
If there is any political party in the European Parliament which has high expectations of what the European Union can do in the future, it must be Volt Europe. Volt is the party most explicitly running on a pan-European ticket. In 2019, one candidate from Germany, Damian Boeselager, was elected to the European Parliament. More recently, at the national elections for the Dutch parliament in March 2021, Volt Netherlands came in with three seats, while at municipal level many more Volt candidates were elected, often supported by young voters. Why does Volt think that our future should be a European one, and what kind of strategy do they envisage to realise such a future? These and other issues we discussed when interviewing Damian Boeselager, Member of the European Parliament for Volt Europe.
Turning the page towards more Europe
Volt Europa, abbreviated as Volt, is a young political party, founded in 2017. Volt was established on the same day that the United Kingdom formally announced its intention to leave the European Union. And this clearly must have been more than a coincidence since one of the key motives to establish Volt was to focus the political debate on the possibilities the European Union offers. This future-orientated approach is also reflected in the slogans attached to the political programmes of Volt parties at national level. Damian Boeselager: ‘Our slogans are forward-looking, such as “Turn the page,”, or in Germany “You decide who decides tomorrow.”’ The Dutch Volt slogan translates into something like ‘Do not vote for yesterday but vote for tomorrow!’ They are all a bit like this: forward-looking, positive, new-age kind of direction,’ the Volt MEP explains.
This positive approach is one of the key issues that distinguishes Volt from more traditional parties. ‘I always try not to talk negatively about other parties because that is not my role. Basically, my role is to fight for our ideas.’ He adds that, to put it in simple terms, the trigger for launching Volt was the idea that the issues societies have to deal with now are much bigger than any single nation can handle. ‘No matter what issue you care about, be it social standards, migration, climate change, digitalisation, competitiveness, foreign policy, security, no matter which topic you take, you will always find that these issues cannot be tackled anymore from a purely national point of view.’
Volt also stands for a decidedly pro-integrationist approach to the EU’s future. Often, in the political debate — and not only for populist politicians — the first idea is still to go for national solutions. ‘This approach to go rather to the nation state to deal with problems which are too complex for us, rather than fixing the EU in a way that makes it work, that negative sentiment started our thought process. While negative, more populist, narratives were abundant back then, we saw a lack of pro-European, positive narratives.’
What Damian Boeselager and the other Volt founders also perceived was a lack of a longerterm strategic concept for the European Union. ‘Traditional parties in Germany and actually in all EU countries might at times be pro-European, but they never have a real vision for Europe regarding its integration, its future. They never present a model of what the EU should look like in 10, 15 or 20 years from now.’ The young MEP calls this the ‘muddling through’ approach: ‘While national interests are considered valid and therefore should be represented, in these parties there is no real interest in presenting European solutions.` He refers to the party situation in the European Parliament. ‘They most often have ten, 15, 20 employees. But the power hub for every party in the EP obviously lies in the Member States . Even in the EP, it is quite clear who calls the shots: the Merkels, the Sánchezes, etc., in the Member States.’
For the MEP it is evident that the question should be: where do we go from here? He believes some reform is needed. ‘I am currently working on this as a member of the EP Committee on Constitutional Affairs. Our idea would be that you have one vote for your national list, and one vote for the European list. This way you actually create European parties. To close the circle and actually have European interests represented, you need European parties that have actual power.’ Here he refers to the parliamentary powers vested in a normal parliamentary democracy. ‘Which means that the majority in the house forms the government and that government can be held accountable. The latter is an important point that also affects your work at the ECA.’
For Damian Boeselager, ideally speaking, the ultimate threat to a governing coalition would be that this coalition loses its support in parliament. ‘And currently, at the EP, this is not a realistic scenario.’ He gives an example of the limitations to the EP’s powers: ‘If the parliament were to ask for the resignation of a single Commissioner — which, formally, we cannot even do — we could not really decide who comes next. It is not an attractive tool for us to use. And this is what I mean with things that should change: issues of accountability and responsibility, and their being fudged, and then a perception that the EU is not democratic – all leads to anti-EU sentiments. And the system is democratic, but it is also rather complex. Ultimately, this feeling of a lack of accountability can have far-reaching consequences, as we have seen with Brexit.’ He reiterates that it is time for change, to get rid of the last vestiges of ‘governmentalism’ and turn the page to something more accountable, something that is understandable and has more impact.
Accountability to make you stronger
Damian Boeselager already referred to the interest the ECA has, as an external auditor, in strengthening accountability, and he believes that public auditors, as they can be critical, have an important role to play in his European narrative. ‘The question is: what kind of EU do we need? The ECA is part of the EU, it is an EU institution. When the ECA criticises the EU, it actually strengthens it, because you are basically showing where the EU is functioning well, and where less so. This is all part of accountability: failures need to be identified and exposed to public scrutiny.’ He sees a huge responsibility for the ECA in ensuring that everybody certainly the parliament but not only, holds governments accountable. ‘With every criticism the ECA presents, you strengthen the EU’s accountability, and thereby its credibility. Honestly, it could not be more important and I am very happy that the ECA exists.’
For the MEP, where the onus for the ECA’s critical remarks lies is a very straightforward matter. ‘If those you criticise want to have more positive reports, it is very simple: they just need to act upon your recommendations. I do not know the procedures for dialogue between auditor and auditee before you publish, and, as a public auditor, you have to assess how harsh you need to be. But if there is wrongdoing and the ECA does not come forward with it, you make the EU not more but less credible.’
The MEP also has a question for the ECA: ‘Does the ECA think it now has all the powers and possibilities to fulfil its duties, to provide evidenced-based audit reports, independently and objectively? Because this is certainly of interest to me. If the ECA has any thoughts on potential necessary improvements in its powers, I would like to know about it .’
An inherent weakness concerning modernisation
As a member of the EP Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Damian Boeselager is keen to introduce constitutional changes that reinforce pan-European arrangements for finding solutions and implementing them. This brings us back to the main reasons for creating Volt in the first place. ‘The way we think about it is very simple: there are issues which transcend all borders, which is why the EU exists in its current form: it arbitrates between national interests and defines common European interests for a number of topics. We can call it an “interest” balancing process.’ He explains that the process is cumbersome since it is still mainly inter-governmentally oriented, with the EU seen as an institution to which you send national representatives, even for the European Parliament.
He continues, saying that on the other hand, this inter-governmentalism means that national governments take many decisions that have an influence well beyond their borders. ‘That is why in Greece people say: “How come that Merkel is influencing the national austerity strategy so much?” So governments have influence over citizens in other countries, but these citizens do not have a chance to vote for them, or vote them out of office. This is the democratic issue here. The executives are really powerful. And the way to solve this is through European parliamentary democracy, giving more powers and competences to the European level.’
To illustrate his point the MEP gives what he calls a ‘negative’ and a ‘positive’ example, the negative one relating to immigration and the positive one relating to the pandemic and its consequences. ‘For the EU’s immigration policy the EU has been giving itself powers for years now, but since 2015 there has been no real progress. Why? Because the Justice and Home Affairs Council cannot put it on the agenda anymore, and then the whole EU trilogue process is completely blocked since no agreement can be found, it does not even come to a vote.’ He labels this a failure of the institutional set-up.
The positive example relates to the Next Generation EU instrument (NGEU). ‘I was one of the negotiators of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. By the way, we talked about the ECA’s input, which was extremely helpful.’ Damian Boeselager points out that the key moment regarding the NGEU turned out to be the July 2020 summit of the Heads of State. ‘In that four-day meeting the European interest was the weakest interest represented. Commission President von der Leyen was basically just being an arbitrator. She could say “We need to go in this direction,” but nobody would really care in view of the power base. That is a horrible set-up.’ He finds this confirmed in the discussions relating to the rule of law. ‘This topic is then later used by two national governments to basically hold the whole EU hostage over rule of law issues. And then we had the Council inviting the Commission to only apply the law once the case had been dealt with by the European Court of Justice. In my view this goes against the Treaties, first testing the independence of the Commission and secondly, attacking the applicability of Union law.’
For Damian Boeselager it is clear that lessons need to be drawn from the actions and reactions to the pandemic crisis. ‘I am currently drafting a working document in our Committee on Constitutional Affairs. When it comes to health — the first wave of the crisis — we completely failed because we did not have the competences to do anything at Union level. Nor when it came to localised strategies on how to deal with COVID.’ He is more positive about the second wave: ‘We did something about the social and economic consequences of the crisis, not very fast, and sometimes threatened by the process I just outlined. For me the overarching issue here is resilience, and at EU level even more an issue of institutional resilience.’
He observes that both at national and EU level there are processes to adapt institutional set-ups and constitutions. ‘But they are not automated, we do not have constant revision. I would plead for some form of a timetable that makes a revision process mandatory at regular intervals, bringing the decision-making structures of the Union up to date. Or updating the mandate of the ECA.’ He points to the United States, struggling even more with such issues. ‘If you look at the US elections, their electoral college — extremely hard to change, which makes the US a weaker democratic society.’ He identifies this as the inherent weakness with regard to modernising. ‘In the past we had new ideas about how a perfect democracy would look. But things evolve and perhaps the thresholds we have set for adaptation are too high. We then muddle through one crisis and just hope that things will work better in the next one.’
Preparing for the Conference on the Future of Europe
In the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Damian Boeselager is the spokesperson for the Greens, who he has teamed up with to have more impact. ‘Across political groups I do see an interest, also in this Committee, relating to these questions of institutional resilience and rejuvenation. Now the big topic in our Committee is the Conference on the Future of Europe, and the working document I referred to is in preparation for this Conference. There is still the question of what form this conference should take and how binding its conclusions should be.’
In his view, this conference should really be a conference for citizens and attention should be directed at increasing the accountability of the conference towards citizens. As for the expectations he has concerning the ECA regarding this conference, he thinks that, once decisions have been taken on the topics to be discussed, the ECA should formulate its contributions according to these topics. ‘Probably there will be climate, health, security, foreign policy, industrial policy. I think it would be great if the ECA had inputs on these issues. I hope that one discussion topic will be the EU’s institutional set-up and that the ECA will also contribute on this, in view of its expertise regarding governance issues.’
Zooming in on one of the issues, climate, the European Green Deal is an example where EU ambitions collide with Member States’ strategies to implement them. Damian Boeselager: ‘If you look at the Green Deal there is obviously a prioritisation from the European Commission’s side, saying: “Climate, environment, biodiversity, these are important for us.” Then, in the original proposal, there was €9 billion linked to it. I think that the Green Deal is really important and it was good that they did this. Such an amount is something, but it’s not the “big” new Green Deal.’
For the MEP, the Green Deal shows that the European Commission alone has no power to actually deliver on it. ‘The Commission can only propose something hoping that it will go through Council and Parliament. This raises again the question of accountability and democratic process. Because if it were an elected government which knew it had a majority in parliament, it would be able to act on certain things. Something like: this is the Green Deal, it has €200 billion behind it and we are going to change laws X, Y, and Z accordingly.’ He points out that this is not how the EU works: ‘The Commission can only set out an ambition and then hope that it will carry as many co-legislators as possible.’
In this connection, he sees that Council members say one thing in their Member State and another thing in Brussels. ‘For example, Schultz and Merkel both gave speeches on how important more money for the EU Horizon programme was, while at the same time, their finance ministry was advising them not to accept such increases.’ Damian Boeselager underlines he is not against compromise and that it is part of the process. ‘If it is a bad compromise, politicians will be held accountable. But what we are currently held accountable for is a bad institutional set-up. A key issue here is the over-representation of national interests. It is actually the blocking power of the national interests that is making or breaking the EU.’
In this context, he also refers to the rule of law issue discussed earlier. ‘I have to go home and explain why Hungary and Poland could basically hold EU citizens hostage because they don’t want the money their accomplices receive to be stopped. This has nothing to do with compromise, it is a reputational issue.’ He refers to another example, from the July 2020 summit: ‘The way the Dutch Prime Minister behaved then, together with some others, was unbearable. But it was his right, because he is representing only national interests. Institutionally speaking, he has no interest in representing European interests. Again, the issue is that this institutional set-up favours misbehaviour, miscommunication and the dilution of accountability. I am a big fan of the EU, but let’s not leave it at that, let’s fix the issues which are causing such things.’
In addition, he thinks that the current malfunction of the EU institutional mechanism is exacerbated by national elections going on at different moments in different Member States. ‘If you give a blocking power to any single government for very important issues, then, when an election is coming up, they may not be daring enough and they will block. EU policy making is dependent on national circumstances and alternating parties.’ He believes that solutions are available to prevent a European policy, supported by the majority of the European parliament, being blocked by a Council member.
Providing insight, oversight and foresight
Damian Boeselager will be, in his capacity as substitute member of the EP’s Committee on Budgets, the rapporteur for the European Parliament’s 2022 budget. He thinks that insights from the ECA on future risks for the institutions would be useful for his work in this respect. ‘In traditional strategy-making, both for the short and longer term, you can identify external factors that represent opportunities or threats. As the rapporteur for the EP’s 2022 budget it would be helpful to understand, for example, how the trends in CO2 reduction and digitalisation — this dual transition for the administration, also in view of how the pandemic has changed the way we work — are going. Overall goals for energy consumption, CO2 reduction, etc. from other institutions, from agencies, the ECA, the ECB — those would be very interesting.’ He adds that perhaps the ECA could also give recommendations on unforeseen circumstances.
Damian Boeselager expects the ECA to report on both weaknesses and improvements. ‘If the ECA identifies substantial improvements in accountability for X, Y, or Z, this should be reported. This is what I expect from an independent and objective audit institution.’ His perception is that the ECA has a very clear mandate. ‘I worked in German ministries. Not for very long, but long enough to know that there people feared the German Court of Auditors. Because the German Court can destroy public administrators’ careers. I think the ECA should also be feared in the sense that if people think about why they make certain decisions, they should consider “Will I get this through the ECA’s assessment?” So my question for the ECA is: “Do you have enough powers to do your work and to be feared?”’
One topic the MEP is very explicit about is budgeting rules and guidelines, which need to be clear and complied with, but also adapted. ‘There are currently so many bad incentives in the budget context, quite astonishing. I have talked to all the directorates-general in the European Parliament and what I hear regarding the “end-of-year procedures” is that the annuality of the budget triggers bad incentives in budgetary management.’ He points out that he would very much welcome more ECA work regarding specific expenses, and on MEPs’ general expenditure allowances. ‘Coming from the private sector I was surprised to see the arrangements for these allowances and I believe rigorous scrutiny of this type of expenditure is necessary. As an MEP I have access to funds for which the procedures to ensure that they are spent appropriately are not rigorous enough. If your ethical standards are not too high, it is easy to circumvent these procedures.’ He points out that a lot more transparency can still, and should be, embedded in the system of MEP salaries and cost reimbursements.
Pragmatic solutions that work… because they make sense
For the Volt MEP, openness on things that work well and things which work less well and need to be improved — such as cost reimbursement systems, or the real reason why the EU spends several million euros annually so that MEPs can convene in Strasbourg — are crucial to winning trust and the positive reputation that the EU needs if it wishes to move forward. ‘That is why the ECA’s work is very important and necessary and I will always be happy to cite from ECA reports. Currently the issue is: what kind of institutional arguments are we handing eurosceptics? That is what we did for the UK, because they are strong parliamentarians. And the fact is that parliamentary democracy in the Union is still weak, and we should deprive the eurosceptics of this argument, whether they are in Germany, the Netherlands or the UK.’
That last point makes Damian Boeselager even more determined about the changes he wants to pursue in Europe. ‘What I would like to achieve in the coming years is to change the electoral laws, so that we get transnational lists, an important element of the next step towards European parliamentary democracy. Another change I hope to contribute to, is that fewer people, preferably none anymore, freeze to death at our borders or drown in the Mediterranean.’ He is therefore striving for a more workable European immigration code. ‘But also one that attracts more talent globally, by means of effective labour migration systems, something we are working on as well. Another topic I am working on is the data governance act, to ensure that when it comes to digital competitiveness, we are better off here in Europe.’
Regarding the recent Recovery and Resilience Facility, he hopes that it can set an example for the future: ‘A best practice example for future crisis situations, basically to ensure that we have a functioning macroeconomic governance system in Europe. And it could be the beginning of a change in how we govern our Union fiscally. That would be quite a significant step.’
Damian Boeselager may sound like an idealist, but he also sees himself as a pragmatist. ‘The idea that you can solve all issues at national level is nonsense. The idea that you can solve all issues at the European level is just as nonsensical. You need local, regional, national and European systems that take decisions on political issues, decisions which need to be taken at those levels. It is as simple as that. To do so we need efficient decision-making mechanisms. That is all : the pragmatic pro-European approach.’ He recalls the years when he lived in the United States. ‘When I look back I realise that I really like living in Europe. This is true for me. But we do not need people to love the EU. People just need to understand that it is necessary, perhaps more than ever, and that it needs to work well. That’s essential.’
This article was first published on the 1/2021 issue of the ECA Journal. The contents of the interviews and the articles are the sole responsibility of the interviewees and authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Court of Auditors.
