The Parliamentary Election of The Commission President: Costraints on The Parlamentarization of the European Union

Abstract

The proposal for parliamentary election of the Commission president, officially advanced by the European Commission and the European Parliament for the election of the latter in 2014, constitutes the most significant step towards the parliamentarization of the European Union. Connecting the election of the EP to the choice of the Commission president is considered to be an effective way to provide a definitive solution to the democratic deficit of the Union. This article discusses the arguments favoring the parliamentarization project and those against it, showing that the strategy of parliamentarization of the EU is destined to encounter powerful institutional and structural constraints. A different project could be pursued to strengthen the EP without being trapped by those constraints.

Keywords: Parliamentarization of the EU, Lisbon Treaty, European Parliament, European Commission, legislative models