In May 2007 I had the opportunity to look at a publication of the European Parliament which included the speeches and interventions of its president, Josep Borrell, in the exercise of his mandate that had ended just months before. It was a volume of more than 650 pages filled with institutional statements, and it seemed to me that they deserved some attention in the sense of seeing if there were patterns of evolution in the content. The first thing that jumped in view was the continuous references to "political maturity", "the full exercise of their responsibilities", and similar considerations that were in speeches addressed to audiences as diverse as national parliaments, meetings of the European Council, or Universities. The first prevention was, obviously, the one of autocomplacement of the author. But if we went a little further on, it could be interpreted that, if it was emphasizing with such insistence these circumstances, it was perhaps taken for granted that Parliament's role had until then been more accommodative to the indications of national governments, and of the Council in particular On this basis I proposed to study and analyze to what extent Parliament had made a qualitative leap in the period that included the presidency of Josep Borrell, that is, from July 2004 to January 2007.
The President of Parliament does not have the functions of a head of government, or a leader of the parliamentary majority. The functions of this figure are rather those of animator of initiatives, promoter of ideas and above all, conscientious forger, a keyword in the European quarter. Therefore, the first idea is that there is no political program that is personalized in the figure of the president.
In this work, he wanted to pay attention to those moments in which Parliament's performance was decisive, insofar as its position was consolidated within the European institutional framework. As a starting point Borrell's own election as president could provide some key points of interest, in the sense that it made visible current trends involved in the project to strengthen the role of Parliament as the only European institution chosen by suffrage . After all, Borrell was a newcomer to Parliament, and the Spanish Socialists had already had a president, Enrique Barón. In politics the decisions are never taken for a single reason, and even less in Europe, but Borrell's leading role in the Convention that designed the Constitution was probably a weight argument. A president was looked for who had worked the new responsibilities of the Parliament.
The next step was to make a choice of the points to deal with among the heterogeneous parliamentary activity. I decided on three cases that had to do with each of the main responsibilities of Parliament: The Buttiglione case (regarding the Commission's control), the financial perspectives (regarding budget control) and the services directive ( regarding the legislative activity). Initially I also intended to study Parliament's role in Turkey's accession negotiations. The fact is that the subsequent development of the work made me see that Parliament's actions on the subject were not relevant. It is necessary to say that the chamber does not have powers in the negotiation, but at the end of the process when voting for admission. Although there was documentation of great interest, no central role was seen. Talking about the start of negotiations was too late, since the opening of the process was a few years back; To talk about membership was too early, since the negotiations had to be extended until 2015.
