The politicization of the EU Commission : democratic control and the dynamics of executive selection
By: WILLE, Anchrit
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ArticlePublisher: Los Angeles : IIAS, September 2012Subject(s): Poder Legislativo | Democratização | Accountability | Aspecto Político | União Européria | União EuropériaInternational Review of Administrative Sciences 78, 3, p. 383-402Abstract: Since the rise of the narrative on the democratic deficit, at the beginning of the 1990s, EU governance is expected to be democratic and its executive is expected to be democratically legitimated. Since this issue was forced onto the European agenda, the EU has been in a process of continuous polity building in which the Treaties have been revised every few years by the member states to make among other things the holders of political power in the institutions more accountable. This article links the changes in the legal and political framework governing the appointment and tasks of the EU Commission to changes in executive recruitment. It explains how strengthened democratic control and accountability over this part of the EU executive has politicized the selection of EU commissioners. This has become visible in the access and exit procedures of this part of the EU executive, but also in shifts in the demand and supply factors in the process of EU executive recruitment. This change is best characterized as a response and adaptation to the increasingly demanding political environment within which the EU Commission finds itself entrenched one where the highest political personnel of the EU executive need to address the modern problems of a democratic polity
Since the rise of the narrative on the democratic deficit, at the beginning of the 1990s, EU governance is expected to be democratic and its executive is expected to be democratically legitimated. Since this issue was forced onto the European agenda, the EU has been in a process of continuous polity building in which the Treaties have been revised every few years by the member states to make among other things the holders of political power in the institutions more accountable. This article links the changes in the legal and political framework governing the appointment and tasks of the EU Commission to changes in executive recruitment. It explains how strengthened democratic control and accountability over this part of the EU executive has politicized the selection of EU commissioners. This has become visible in the access and exit procedures of this part of the EU executive, but also in shifts in the demand and supply factors in the process of EU executive recruitment. This change is best characterized as a response and adaptation to the increasingly demanding political environment within which the EU Commission finds itself entrenched one where the highest political personnel of the EU executive need to address the modern problems of a democratic polity
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