We Think EuropeEuropean Youth Seminars @ Europahaus Marienberg
We Think EuropeAuthor
Institutions of the EU
by Milan Gaspar, 2010
Duties of a commissioner of the EU
Every working person has his/her own duties and objectives during the work, and so does an EU commissioner.
To Get to know and understand these duties we have to look into the structure of the European Commission. This institution is the executive arm of the EU and initiator of legislative proposals. A new commission is appointed every five years, which means the members called commissioners get changed. The commission consists of twenty-seven deputies; one from each EU country.
For example: the Hungarian delegate is László Andor and the German delegate is Günther Oettinger. These appointed commissioners have generally been held political positions in their countries of origin and many have been govenrment ministers but as members of the Commission they are committed to acting in the interests of the European Union as a whole and not taking instructions from national governments.
These objectives are the two most important duties of an appointed EU commissioner.
In my opinion it's useful to have such duties as the above mentioned ones because if the commissioners aren't allowed to prefer the governmental ineterest instead of the EU- interest, they won't have a chance to lobby, and it' also good for keeping the unity among the countries, because none of the countries get too much power.
