Dr. Emmanuel Schön-Quinlivan:

I will go in reverse and try to cover as many of the questions as possible. On the Chairman's question on policy areas that could be re-delegated to the national level, this links up with a few of the points made regarding the purpose of the European Union or the question of what is the European Union. I will share my opinion. The EU proves its added value, which the task force report mentions quite a bit. I agree with the task force report that there is no area that should be re-delegated. I agree with what Emmanuel Macron mentioned last September, namely, national sovereignty is not effective any more and we should think of European sovereignty and this idea of shared sovereignty that was at the heart of the European Coal and Steel Community. I very much agree with those positions. This does not mean that the national parliaments and the sub-national levels do not have a role in policy shaping and policy-making, but it means we can be effective at the European level much more than at the national level.

This is also because of how the EU has developed. We discovered, as the economic recession hit us, that we needed to act together and that acting individually was not going to work. On this idea of re-delegating, I know Dr. Barrett thought it odd that the Commission would automatically put forward, almost at the start, this idea to the effect that it was not going to re-delegate, even though it was looking at doing less more efficiently. I do not think it is odd. It fits perfectly with the decade of reports put out by the Commission. It protects its turf and I would have been extremely surprised if it was the opposite way. Therefore, I was not surprised. They did not even pretend they were going to envisage re-delegation.