the European Council of Ministers. In this connection, it is possible that in
future, groups of countries rather than individual countries will fill this post.
There are also considerations of changing the practise of appointing the
Commission. Until the present, the Commission has consisted of two citizens
from each of the large countries (Germany, France, the UK, and Italy), and one
from each of the remaining small countries. The persons in question are
appointed by the Council of Ministers after prior nomination by the
governments. If this principle, which is laid down in the Amsterdam Treaty, is
maintained, the Commission will become unmanageably large. It is therefore
being considered to change the rules so that the small member countries are not
necessarily represented in the Commission.
Also the so-called democratic deficit will be enhanced by the expected
enlargement. This set of problems relates to at least three aspects. Firstly, it
must be expected that in future, the Parliament will be accorded more powers
and decision making competence vis-à-vis the Council of Ministers and,
perhaps in particular, the Commission, just as it must be expected that the
number of seats in the Parliament will be reallocated in proportion to the given
number of Member States and may be extended to include more than the
current 626 members. Secondly, the political decision making process in the
EU may be democratised by making it more open in line with what is
applicable to the national parliaments of the members. Thirdly, the Commission
has been criticised for being subjected only to a limited form of parliamentary
control. Admittedly, the entire Commission as a body may be dismissed by the
Parliament, as it happened in 1999, but none of the Commissioners are
subjected to any actual ministerial responsibility.
Finally, it must be assumed that the enlargement of the EU co-operation will
bring about a need for a reform of the bureaucracy with a view to simplifying
the functioning of the EU system. Bearing the integration efforts made so far in
mind, such an organisational and administrative simplification may, however,
prove to be a highly difficult task to solve in practise.
In the long run, the enlargement may lead to an inclusion of the social welfare
systems of the individual countries into the integration process. The free
mobility of persons may cause extensive migration from the new, poor Central
and Eastern European member countries to the richer Western European
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