Opposition Leader Margaret Thatcher shows her European colours in Parliament Square, June 1975. PA Archive/ Press Association. All rigths reserved.Not even the enormity of the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels has managed to shake national and European leaders out of their political torpor. In every statement they make there is a mantra, which is heard over and over again: ‘we must improve coordination among the national security and intelligence systems’. The same mantra was repeated at the peak of the euro crisis, and is still used in the face of the arrival of millions of migrants to our continent. The keyword of the mantra is always the same: coordination.
Faced with crises and threats of historical proportions, what the member states of the European Union (EU) are willing to do is, wait for it, coordinate better. In other words, they are prepared to cooperate, provided, however, that each national government maintains control over its own domestic policies. This is the problem that goes unaddressed and so creates all the other problems: we have a Union but we don’t have a government of the Union.
The EU’s executive power: uncertain, dispersed and opaque
Not even the enormity of the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels has managed to shake national and European leaders out of their political torpor. The EU suffers primarily from a deficit of executive power. Its executive power is uncertain, dispersed, and opaque. It is uncertain because it is ascribed both to the European Council of heads of state and government and to the European Commission. However, on the politically most important issues for the member states, it is the European Council that controls the political initiative.
