What do EU legislation woes and the Hutton report have in common, asks Phedon Nicolaides
TWO completely unrelated but significant events happened this week. The first was the appraisal of the European Commission of the preparations of Cyprus to enter the European Union. The other was the publication of Lord Hutton’s report on the handling of the Iraq affair by Tony Blair’s government and the subsequent resignation of the Chairman and Director-General of the BBC. Two unrelated events, yet, as I will explain later on, both driven by similar factors but resulting in very different outcomes.
A few days ago, we witnessed again the same ritual in the relations of the Cypriot government with the Commission. On one side was the Commission on the verge of exasperation with the delays in the implementation by Cyprus of EU policies and procedures. On the other side, the government was promising to speed up preparations and complaining that the Commission did not appreciate the efforts that had been made so far.
This umpteenth repetition of the same trite arguments could be dismissed as unavoidable posturing in the relations between national authorities and Community institution, had it not been for the fact that the Commission has the upper hand. And if the Commission decides to use the powers it has at its disposal, Cyprus will be in trouble.
The Treaty of Accession of Cyprus to the EU stipulates that should Cyprus fail to complete its preparations and fulfil all its obligations, the EU, on a proposal from the Commission, may impose emergency measures to prevent free exportation of Cypriot products to the rest of the EU. These measures may be put in place before Cyprus enters the EU and may be retained for a number of years after Cyprus becomes a full member.
With this threat hanging over Cyprus, why is the government not getting its act together? The government has argued that it tries hard. Perhaps it does. But to appreciate whether it is trying hard enough we should put these things in perspective. The main issues that have caused concern to the Commission have been the safety of the Cypriot fleet, the establishment of the agency that will pay out EU money to farmers, the liberalisation of the telecommunications market, the processing of asylum seekers and the system for disbursement of structural funds for regional development.
These are the issues that were identified by the Commission as being the most problematic in its first report on the preparation of the then candidate countries in the Autumn of 1998. On all of these issues other acceding countries have made more progress than Cyprus. For example, Bulgaria had a paying agency accredited in June 2001, Estonia in September 2001 and Slovenia in November 2001.
Could Cyprus have some valid justification for the delays it encounters in implementing measures in any of those fields? Could the task be significantly larger or more difficult in its case than in the case of other acceding countries? For example, since it has the sixth largest fleet in the world, it is perhaps inevitable that it has problems in inspecting all of those ships. Yet, Cyprus began the process of installing additional ship inspectors in major international ports in 1994. Ten years on and safety standards are still below the minimum acceptable. No, it does not seem that the tasks facing Cypriot authorities are so disproportionally large.
What is more disconcerting in a democratic system is that no heads have rolled as a result of those delays. No one seems to bear any responsibility. Instead the government complains that the Commission does not understand it. This brings me to the events of this week in the UK.
What is relevant to our discussion here is not whether Tony Blair or anyone else in the UK government misled Parliament on the risk posed by Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction, nor whether the BBC reported the matter accurately. What is relevant is that the BBC pursued the case relentlessly and despite protestations by the prime minister and other ministers. It did its job as it saw proper in a hostile political climate. Once it became obvious that it had made serious errors, the two top people in the BBC hierarchy resigned. They assumed responsibility for the failings of their organisation.
It is easy to explain away these resignations as something peculiarly British. I do not think so. I think they convey something deeper about the functioning of accountable institutions in democracies. The Chairman and the Director-General resigned because the BBC was afraid that if it had backed down earlier it would have compromised its independence. In the end they wanted so badly to be above suspicion that they refused to admit errors of judgement. In retrospect, it was an unfortunate episode in British politics. However, I think the British political system has emerged stronger than ever and democratic procedures have triumphed. No democracy is harmed when the government of the day is challenged by the press.
The BBC is accountable precisely because it is independent. It has no one to hide behind, no one to whom to pass responsibility. When Cypriot ministries or public services are found to have made serious errors they have an amazing ability to pass on responsibility. This is because no one has any meaningful independence of action.
Well, this game will soon be over, at least as far as EU rules and policies are concerned. Member states come up with ingenious excuses to justify their failure to apply EU law and policies. The European Court of Justice has never accept any reason except complete impossibility to apply the law. The typical arguments that the Court strikes down with regularity concern internal administrative difficulties and legal obstacles – the quintessential Cypriot excuses for inaction. Oh, I can’t wait for the May 1 to arrive.
Phedon Nicolaides is Professor at the European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
