The European Commission

The Commission is independent of national governments. Its job is to represent and uphold the interests of the EU as a whole. It drafts proposals for new European laws, which it presents to the European Parliament and the Council.

The Commission is the only body in the EU that can propose a new law. This is called the monopoly of the right of initiative. No other organisation or country has established a body with similar competences. The Council can only change a law proposal from the Commission if all member states agree.

It is also the EU’s executive arm – in other words, it is responsible for implementing the decisions of Parliament and the Council. That means managing the day-to-day business of the European Union: implementing its policies, running its programmes and spending its funds.

Like the Parliament and Council, the European Commission was set up in the 1950s under the EU’s founding treaties. The European Commission is based in Brussels.

The term ‘Commission’ is used in two senses. First, it refers to the team of men and women – one from each EU country – appointed to run the institution and take its decisions. Secondly, the term ‘Commission’ refers to the institution itself and to its staff.

Informally, the appointed Members of the Commission are known as ‘commissioners’. They have all held political positions in their countries of origin and many have been government ministers, but as Members of the Commission they are committed to acting in the interests of the Union as a whole and not taking instructions from national governments.

A new Commission is appointed every five years, within six months of the elections to the European Parliament.

The procedure is as follows:

First, a European summit of Prime Ministers appoint a candidate for Commission President. From 2014 the decision will be adopted by 72% of the Prime Ministers also representing 65% of all EU citizens. The candidate must then be approved by the European Parliament by absolute majority in the European Parliament.

Then every member state "suggest" possible names as its commisisoner for the Commission President. The President then consult the prime ministers and the political groups to compose a Commission which shall be adopted by 72% of the member states representing 65% of all EU citizens.

In the end the full college must be elected by an absolute majority of members - MEPs - in the European Parliament. See Art. 17.7 TEU in the Lisbon Treaty.

Art. 214.2.2 TEC in the Nice Treaty can be consulted for the previous procedures where the Commission was formally appointed by a qualified majority - 255 of 345 weigted votes from at least 18 of the 27 Prime Ministers in the European Council and then approved by a simple majority in the European Parliament.

The Lisbon Treaty changed the requirement from simple to absolute majority of MEPs.

The Lisbon Treaty has changed the appointment procedure of Commissioners. Under the Nice Treaty member states "propose" their national commissioners and have an effective right of veto in deciding them. Under Lisbon the member states will only "suggest" names for decision to the already appointed Commission President.

The Lisbon Treaty provided for a rotation system for Commissioners so that only 2/3 of the member states could be represented on the Commission at any one time. This proposal was given up after the Irish referendum on 12 June 2008 rejecting the Lisbon Treaty.

See Art. 17-18 TEU and 244 - 250 TFEU of the Lisbon Treaty. The rules in the Nice Treaty shall be found in the special protocol on enlargement, Art. 4 - page 348 in the reader friendly edition of the Nice Treaty. Here it is mentioned that the following Commission shall be smaller than one from each member state when the EU has reached 27 members. A rotation system shall be adopted unanimously.

"The number of Members of the Commission shall be set by the Council, acting unanimously". The new system shall replace Art. 213 TEC stating: "The Commission must include at least one national of each of the Member States".

The Commission can be sacked by a two-thirds majority of the European Parliament.

The Commission has a General Secretariat headed by a secretary general and 23 standing Directorates General.

The Commission President is José Manuel Barroso, from Portugal.

The Commission remains politically accountable to Parliament, which has the power to dismiss the whole Commission by adopting a motion of censure. Individual members of the Commission must resign if asked to do so by the President, provided the other commissioners approve.

The Commission attends all the sessions of Parliament, where it must clarify and justify its policies. It also replies regularly to written and oral questions posed by MEPs.

The day-to-day running of the Commission is done by its administrative officials, experts, translators, interpreters and secretarial staff. There are approximately 25 000 of these European civil servants. That may sound a lot, but in fact it is fewer than the number of staff employed by a typical medium-sized city council in Europe. The ‘seat’ of the Commission is in Brussels (Belgium), but it also has offices in Luxembourg, representations in all EU countries and delegations in many capital cities around the world.

The ‘seat’ of the Commission is in Brussels (Belgium), but it also has offices in Luxembourg, representations in all EU countries and delegations in many capital cities around the world.

The European Commission has four main roles:

1. to propose legislation to Parliament and the Council;

2. to manage and implement EU policies and the budget;

3. to enforce European law (jointly with the Court of Justice);

4. to represent the European Union on the international stage, for example by negotiating Treatys between the EU and other countries.