The European Commission

Today's visit to the European Commission started with a walk around the Parliament Building. As we walked Professor Brunel gave an in-depth explanation of the roles of political parties in the EU system. His extensive knowledge of the complex governing structure gave us a good foundation for the rest of the day's learning.

Our first meeting was with a Dusan Sandor, a Slovak diplomat living in Brussels. Dusan explained the functional role of each EU institution. He also spoke briefly about the EU's founding fathers, and his belief that in the future they will be well-known historical figures in Europe, much like Thomas Jefferson or George Washington in the U.S.

Some of the most interesting insights Dusan provided were about how the balance of power has shifted since the founding of the EU. In the beginning, he explained, the council was significantly more powerful than the parliament or commission but the other two gradually gained influence and now their is a much more equitable balance.

Finally, Dusan illustrated how much of an impact the EU presence has had on the city of Brussels, citing statistics such as 25,000 EU employees in Brussels (plus their families) and 10-30,000 lobbyists at any given time.

Our second dpeaker, an Austrian, specialized in EU / U.S. trade relations. She presented some fascinating examples of how closely integrated and interdependent our economies are. For example, she pointed out that the two economies absorb 20% of eachothers product exports and 30% of eachothers service exports. With this in mind, she illustrated the difficulties that regulatory difference between the Eu and U.S. create, and why it is important for us to work cooperatively to establish standardized regulations for future products. She also explained how greater cooperation will help keep our trade relationships as dominant forces, as we face greater competition from the emerging BRIC nations. Towards the end of the discussion we touched briefly on the WTO's interaction with the EU, and professor Brunal added the valuable insight that the EU member states are represented by one common voice in their interactions with the WTO.

Our final speaker was an expert in EU competition policy. He explained how the focus of his organization has shifted from legal competencies to more economic ones. His particular specialization is in anti-trust and merger controls and the extent of penalties that the EU can impose on firms (including fines and behavioral mandates, but no criminal charges). As part of this discussion, Professor Brunel astoutely observed that the fines imposed by the EU can be monumental even when compared with the total EU budget (of which they make up 2-3%.

We certainly learned a lot before getting on the bus to Paris, and the long ride allowed us to continue our discussion on the successes and challenges of the Commission and EU as a whole. Professor Brunel was nice enough to entertain our many questions and provide detailed answers.