For the past few weeks, the European Parliament has played an intoxicating game of "let's pretend". Let's pretend that the European Union is the United States, the European Commission is the White House and the European Parliament is Congress. The opportunity has come in the confirmation hearings for new European commissioners, who are due to take office next month. But there are key differences between such hearings in Brussels and in Washington. Commissioners do relatively dull things like blocking mergers, or fiddling with fish quotas, rather than waging wars or running up trillion-dollar deficits. The powers of their inquisitors are also limited. Senate committees often block presidential appointments, but MEPS have no power to veto individual commissioners. All they have is a nuclear option: the power to reject the commission in its entirety.
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