The European Commission and the Growth … of Economists’ Power

Economists have always been powerful within the European Commission. But their power used also to be counterbalanced by lawyers, owners of a form of bureaucratic legitimacy insofar law has been (for a long time) considered as the ‘royal path’ for becoming an official in many European countries. Increasingly contested over the last 15 years, the power of lawyers within the Commission seems to have shrunk with the crisis, economists being seen as the only real winners of the financial and economic crisis. To what extent is this picture accurate? What are its indicators? What are the differences between economists and what kind of economists are the ‘real’ winners? To what extent is it a break with the past given prior trends? Based on a study which combines different types of analysis (biographies of top official since 5 years, second hand data on the Commission’s staff, interviews with EU officials), this paper’s aim is to give some preliminary answers.