Günter Verheugen, who had championed the cause of EU membership for Malta, has called for a controversial shake up of the European Commission that would see smaller EU member States such as Malta losing their commissioners.
With a population of 400,000, Malta is the least populated EU member State and, as such, would be the first to fall in Mr Verheugen’s line of fire.
The proposals present a considerable shift in position for Mr Verheugen, who had gone to lengths to quell Maltese opposition to EU membership. He had gone even so far as to appear on Xarabank to reassure the country that its voice would be fully represented at EU level and that Malta’s sovereignty would not suffer as a result of accession.
As the European Union struggles to come to grips with undertaking a long-awaited institutional reform, which is expected to be given a renewed impetus this year, the latest proposal tabled by Mr Verheugen suggests that smaller EU member States do not need to have commissioners.
On Wednesday, Mr Verheugen, who now serves jointly as industry commissioner and as commission vice-president, proposed that smaller EU countries should instead be given deputy commissionerships with lighter portfolios in key policy areas.
The EU’s current status quo provides one commissionership for each member State. Former foreign affairs minister Joe Borg had been appointed Malta’s commissioner and was given the fisheries portfolio.
But with the EU now having been expanded to 27 members, Mr Verheugen said the plan is to create “a small, efficient and highly competent commission”.
The idea, however, has not gone down well with regional policy commissioner Danuta Hubner, herself from Poland, who lashed out at her German colleague in the wake of his comments.
“Creating two categories of member States and accepting size as a criterion, on the basis of which a country would have the right to designate a commissioner, is groundless and, frankly speaking, unacceptable,” Ms Hubner was quoted as saying by Polish press agency PAP.
On the other hand, the one-commissioner-per-State system does have its drawbacks and the recent accession of Romania and Bulgaria has created an even more cumbersome 27-member commission. One completely new portfolio, multilingualism, has been created and handed to incoming Bulgarian commissioner Leonard Orban, while Romanian commissioner Meglena Kuneva has been tasked with consumer protection.
While it is not known what population level cut-off Mr Verheugen is proposing, population differentials vary widely across the Union.
Malta falls last in the population rankings and is preceded by Luxembourg (468,000), Cyprus (818,000), Estonia (1.3 million) and Slovenia (2.01 million).
At 82.4 million, Germany is the most heavily populated member State followed by France (63.6 million), the UK (60.2 million), Italy (58.7 million) and Spain (45 million).
Mr Verheugen’s proposal bears a certain resemblance to the so-called qualified majority voting procedure at Council of Ministers level, where the number of votes allotted to a State is determined by its population. Countries such as Germany, France, the UK and Italy hold 29 votes, while Malta has just three. The Council also requires a unanimous vote on issues considered to be highly sensitive.
Whatever the case, the issue of the number of commissioners the EU is expected to feature prominently in the year to come. The Nice treaty, which is currently in force, stipulates the overall number of commissioners should be reduced once the EU is expanded to 27 members, while the draft EU Constitution proposes an equitable rotation system for commissionerships, similar to that used for the EU presidency.