EESC abolition?

One to watch: a written declaration in the Parliament put forward by MEPs Nils Lundgren and Hélène Goudin in the hope of attracting signatures from other MEPs. It observes that the European Parliament, the EU's one directly elected institution, has substantially increased its powers under recent treaties. It comments that the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) was set up before this happened. It accuses the EESC of duplicating the work of the Parliament “without having a corresponding democratic mandate” and adds that the EESC “helps to strengthen corpora-tism at the expense of democracy” and centralises political power contrary to the subsidiarity principle. The upshot is a call to abolish the EESC. The MEPs argue that the EESC “is no longer a desirable contribu-tory element in the EU's institutional structure” and that the EU should demonstrate that it can abandon those institutions that have “outlived their usefulness”. Since when was usefulness a prerequisite for survival?