Tuesday 5 August 2008

Countries from same 'cultural area' to share EU-Commissioner?

According to an article in the German national newspaper Die Welt (which I found through the "European Union Law Blog")
"the French EU-Council presidency under the leadership of president Nicolas Sarkozy is considering to reduce the number of EU-Commissioners in such a manner that countries from "similar cultural and linguistic areas" will dispose of just one common Commissioner in Brussels."
(own translation)
As source, the newspaper is refering to "high diplomatic circles", but I haven't found any confirmation anywhere else (did you?).

The goal of this initiative, if the news is correct, seems to be to prevent lengthy disputes about how to scrap individual countries' commissioners.

In agreement with the European Union Law Blog, I doubt that this will actually avoid any lengthy discussions, especially since there will hardly be an agreement on what a 'similar cultural area' is, how many countries will be included, and from which country of each cultural area the Commissioner will come from.

Ha-ha! I can already imagine the public debates about questions such as "Skandinavia", the "Baltics", the "Germanic area", the "Roman area" (including Romania!)...

Maybe drawing lots will be less conflictual, and if the European Parliament disagrees, it can redraw until the best Commission is composed!

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