The European Parliament’s Involvement in the EU Response to the Corona Pandemic

Legislation on the Fast Track

As a result, the legislative activity of the EP was noticeably constrained. Most EU legis­lation is now adopted at first reading, fol­lowing a common position that is agreed by the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission in the so-called trialogues. This procedure increases the efficiency of EU legislation, but it is also criticised due to its lack of transparency. Nevertheless, the pro­portion of EU legislation adopted at first reading following agreement in a trialogue has risen steadily in recent legislative pe­riods. In 2019, all 203 co-decision procedures were completed at first reading for the first time.

At the same time, the pandemic poses additional challenges for the trialogue procedure. This is because trialogues are composed of a relatively large number of participants from three different institutions. But even though the European Par­liament, the Council, and the Commission each promptly established internal com­munication channels to hold at least a limited number of meetings securely via video­conference, the technical infrastructure and/or political agreement on a common video format was lacking. There­fore, no trialogue negotiations took place between February 2020 and the following parliamentary summer recess. As a result, in the first half of 2020, the EP took a total of 18 decisions in co-decision dossiers, down from 197 in the first half of 2019 (although traditionally a relatively large number of legislative initiatives are con­cluded before the European elections). More­over, due to the lack of its own right of initiative, the EP can only take legislative action if the Commission uses its right of proposal.

The few legislative decisions taken by the EP in the first half of 2020 in the wake of the corona pandemic can largely be characterised as “confirmatory decisions”, in which the EP gives its stamp of approval to legislation driven by the Commission and, in some cases, national governments in the Council. These included measures to mobilise investment in Member States’ health systems, the reinforcement of the EU’s civil protection mechanism, and exemptions to support the agriculture and fisheries sectors.

On the one hand, these decisions show that the EP is quite capable of using urgent procedures in legislation. In April 2020, the procedure for amending the EU budget to free up financial resources for civil protec­tion and severely affected Member States took less than three weeks from the Commission proposal to approval by the Parliament and the Council; the parliamentary process itself took only three days. Nineteen legislative procedures were com­pleted by the EP within 23.3 days on aver­age between March and July 2020, with an average MEP approval rate of 90.8 per cent (own calculation). Despite the higher level of fragmentation following the 2019 European elections, the EP acted quickly and consistently.

Scrutinising the Commission

Parliamentary work not only takes place through legislative and budgetary decisions, but also by scrutinising the executive, in particular if it has to act fast during times of crisis. Here too, the distinct lines of legitimacy in the political system of the EU have an impact: As long as the central political decisions at the European level are taken in the European Council, parliamentary control must be exercised to a large extent through the national parliaments. Although the President of the European Council reports to the EP plenary after each summit, he is not accountable to the EP.

The Commission, on the other hand, is directly accountable to the EP. Here, follow­ing the resumption of committee meetings by video, the Parliament has also fully resumed its hearing activities. According to the EP’s research service, between March and July 2020, the EP held a total of 113 hearings in its committees on the management of the coronavirus pandemic in the EU, 75 of which involved representatives from the Commission. Hearings on the man­agement of the pandemic also included representatives of several EU agencies (such as Europol, the European Medicines Agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, among other), as well as European Central Bank (ECB) Presi­dent Christine Lagarde, the then Eurogroup President Mário Centeno, or, per custom, the head of government of the country assuming the rotating Council Presidency, which in July 2020 was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In almost all committees, MEPs questioned the Commission about how the EU was dealing with the challenges of the pandemic. The successor to Phil Hogan, who resigned at the end of August 2020, will also have to face a hearing in the EP before being appointed.

During the corona pandemic, MEPs also made unusually strong use of parliamentary questions to the European Commission. Since the beginning of the year until September 2020, they have asked a total of 535 questions relating to “Covid-19”. This is more than all questions from the EP on Brexit in the last five years, and about half as many as on migration since 2014 (own data collection). At the same time, it is note­worthy that the majority of questions came from the political groups supporting the Commission (EPP, S&D, Renew Europe) and not, as is usually the case, from the EU-sceptical or oppositional groups. This under­lines the importance of MEPs’ need for information on the pandemic’s impact and the response by the EU.

Nevertheless, the communication function of the European Parliament remains limited. Neither in the euro crisis nor the refugee crisis was the EP the arena for central European policy debates. This has remained largely the case, despite these hearings. An important exception was the public apology of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Italy in April 2020.

The First Economic Response – Cohesion Funds, SURE, ESM

An early economic response of the EU was the decision in April 2020 to mobilise exist­ing EU funds so that they could be used more flexibly, and partly without co-financ­ing by the Member States (Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative). Given its budgetary powers, the EP was formally fully involved and agreed to the Commission’s proposal via the urgent procedure – and through remote voting. This co-decision role was mandatory due to the use of exist­ing EU funds. However, this legal basis also had disadvantages, such as the fact that the criteria for allocation of the funds be­tween the Member States were not changed, meaning that Central and Eastern European countries benefited greatly, although they were (at the time) relatively hardly affected by the coronavirus.

Parliament’s involvement was different when innovative economic instruments were introduced. One example of this is EU support for short-time work allowances in Member States particularly affected (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency – SURE). A total of €100 billion in loans is to support the various short-time work allowance schemes, which most Member States introduced to mitigate the economic consequences of their respective lockdowns. Such support for national welfare measures would have been highly controversial beforehand, but it passed unanimously within weeks due to the impact of the pandemic. The EP, however, was not involved in this decision. Similar to the EFSM in the euro crisis, the European Com­mission used the flexibility of Art. 122 (2) TFEU. No approval by the European Parlia­ment is necessary – it was merely informed of the decision. The procedure for the dis­bursement of the loans also takes the form of implementing decisions by the Council on a proposal from the Commission, without EP involvement.

In parallel with the SURE programme, the Eurogroup agreed in April 2020, after difficult negotiations, on a comprehensive set of instruments to help euro area Mem­ber States deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic. This includes the (as yet unused) possibility of borrowing from the ESM on significantly better terms. Again, the European Parliament was not involved – the ESM is an international treaty outside the EU institutions, and its decisions are not controlled by the EP. The ECB’s actions, including the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP), are also not under the direct control of the EP.

No Role for the EP at the Summit

However, the core of the response to the medium-term economic disruption is to be provided by the next MFF (2021–2027) and the EU recovery fund. According to the politi­cal agreement of the European Council in July 2020, the MFF will be much larger than had been planned before the pandemic – at €1.8 trillion, including a €750 billion recovery fund (Next Generation EU). This fund will also allow the EU to borrow larger sums on its own, create new own resources, and disburse €390 billion in grants, mainly to the most severely affected Member States. Although limited in time, this com­bi­nation of a substantially increased budget, new own resources, and direct grants to Member States represents a step forward in the integration of the Union that would have been unthinkable before the pandemic.

Formally, the EP should have played an important role in the negotiations on the MFF – since the Lisbon Treaty, it is not only the annual budget but also the long-term financial framework that requires the approval of MEPs. During the long lead-up to the MFF negotiations, the Parliament therefore passed several resolutions in which MEPs in particular called for a higher EU budget with more investment spending at the European level, new own resources, and a robust rule of law mechanism.

However, the EP was only involved to a very limited extent in the actual political negotiations from May to July 2020. The political initiative to combat the growing divergences in the EU through a recovery fund with grants came from Germany and France, in close coordination with Commission President von der Leyen; the restructured MFF was proposed by the European Commission; and the political wrangling over the relationship between grants and loans and the central pillars of the MFF took place in the European Council. At the crucial summit in July 2020 – where European Council President Charles Michel, the 27 heads of state and government, and Commission President von der Leyen spent five days and nights wrestling over the EU budget – the EP President was invited only to a brief formal exchange of views as a prelude to the summit. The central lines of conflict and negotiation were between the Member States, and the political deci­sion was ultimately one for the heads of state and government.

This negotiating mode is also reflected in the outcome. Although some of the key demands of the EP resolutions can be found in the substantially revamped MFF – in particular the increased budget and the prospect of new own resources – the heads of state and government reached agreement at the expense of the pan-European inter­est. In the negotiations, cuts were made pri­marily to overarching programmes (Euro­pean Defence Fund, Horizon Europe, EU4Health, Erasmus, etc.), whereas finan­cial transfers to the Member States and national rebates were maintained. The pros­pect of new EU own resources is included, but it remains extremely vague, as is the rule of law mechanism.

However, unlike the previous examples, the MFF process is not yet complete. Al­though heads of state and government can negotiate the policy framework among themselves in the European Council, the necessary formal implementation requires an agreement with the EP. This includes both the formal MFF decision and the deci­sion on the reform of EU own resources necessary for the recovery fund. Its formal veto right will give Parliament the leverage to try to push its own priorities for the recov­ery fund and the MFF in autumn 2020.

The EU Needs Parliamentary In­volvement Even in Times of Crisis

The far-reaching measures launched to contain and combat the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the EU also require greater parliamentary legitimacy at the European level. In the short term, the adoption of the MFF and the recovery fund is the central test for the EP’s role in the EU’s institutional balance.

The formal right of consent of the EP contrasts with the practical preliminary decision by the European Council, in which the national governments weave a compro­mise around their individual national interests. In doing so, they have also cut spending in areas that the EP has called for in the interests of Europe as a whole. It is now up to the German Council Presidency to negotiate a compromise between the EP and the Council so that the MFF, and in particular the financial resources of the recovery fund, are available on time. The majority political groups (EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, and Greens/EFA) have publicly stated that they will only agree to the MFF if improvements are made to the rule of law and pan-European programmes. It will also be important for parliamentarians to es­tab­lish control over the implementation of the recovery fund and the associated nation­al programmes. The MFF decision will also be the moment when the Parlia­ment could commit the Commission and Member States in the Council to concrete details and a fixed timetable for envisaged new own resources.

However, MEPs face a dilemma: Following the political agreement in the European Council, the EP would have to accept re­spon­sibility for delays in the MFF and dis­bursements from the recovery fund. If, on the other hand, the EP accepts the preliminary decision of the European Council, MEPs would lose their credibility and be care­lessly giving up their participation rights.

In the medium to long term, the EU should also discuss in the upcoming “Conference on the Future of Europe” how European crisis policy-making can be better legitimised by Parliament. After 10 years of crisis, it is no longer sufficient to refer to the unique situation of individual crises when crisis mode has become the normal state of affairs. However, two means that require treaty amendments could in the future further strengthen the involvement of the EP, even in times of crisis. On the one hand, the Parliament should be given a right of initiative in addition to the Euro­pean Commission’s existing monopoly on making proposals. With its own initia­tives, the EP could thus react during – but of course also outside times of – crisis, thereby bringing in a stronger pan-Euro­pean element to EU crisis response in addition to the Commission.

On the other hand, the EU’s crisis policy instruments should be reformed to include involvement of the Parliament. As long as it is primarily national resources and compe­tences that are affected – as is the case with the ESM – parliamentary control is the responsibility of the national par­liaments. If EU instruments are used, how­ever, such as with the SURE short-time work­ing allowance programme and the EFSM, the Parliament should be given a right of consent in the course of the next treaty amendment. For this, Art. 122 TFEU would need to be amended to require co-decision.

Times of crisis will always require quick decision-making, which, at the national and European levels, is mostly the domain of the executive. But this quick decision-making also needs to be scrutinised by Parliament, and long-term changes should require parliamentary approval. With so much crisis-driven policy-making in the EU, the Union should also adapt its crisis policy instruments with stronger EP involvement.