The Representativity of EU Lawmaking: Lessons from the Spitzenkandidaten Experiment

Abstract

The Spitzenkandidaten experiment has elicited much interest in political and academic circles as a potential move toward the politicisation of certain aspects of policy- and law-making in the EU. This article presents a sobering account of the normative and instrumental reasons why these expectations could not be met and they won't be in the near future. In particular, the article stresses (1) the failures in creating a channel for political opposition through the indirect election of the President of the Commission, (2) the misguided targeting of the wrong institution for the valuable purpose of injecting democratic politics into EU lawmaking and (3) that, in view of certain structural European deficits, a cautious approach, more attentive to the inputs coming from national political institutions, ought to be adopted.

Keywords: European Commission; Representative Lawmaking; National Parliaments; European Elections

JEL Classification: K10