Tag Archives: EU President

Von Rompuy and Ashton – yet more evidence there is no EU superstate

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I’ve held back on commenting on the European Council last week that nominated Herman Van Rompuy (Belgian Prime Minister) as new Council President and Baroness Cathy Ashton (UK former leader of the upper house – House of Lords – and Trade Commissioner in the last European Commission) as the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security.

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I felt that the press coverage in the UK was abysmal as usual – I’ve already ranted about the continued reference to the Council President role as “President of Europe” but it got much worse… from the Daily Express   the idea that the Council President would “rule” was a laughable insult to even their readers.  But surely given the origins of our monarchy – surely being “ruled” by a person with no direct control over our lives is in the best British traditions in any case? ;)
Even the BBC went a bundle on the line that these are people no one has ever heard of  -hardly the position of what is usually portrayed by the sort of eurosceptics that distrust the British establishment too as a fundamentally pro-EU biased organisation. 

W300px_1911-EU-top-jobs-van-rompuy (image from http://europetoday.ideasoneurope.eu)

But more interesting I think to reflect what’s actually happened.
We’ve got one small country- one big country / one man – one woman / one Christian Democrat appointee backed by the EPP - one new Labour  
appointee backed by the PES.  Ok we don’t have north – south balance in those two roles (although Brussels insiders usually consider Belgium mentally a southern state that somehow accidentally ended up situated geographically at the north of the continent) but Commission President Barroso is of course from Portugal.  So we’ve ended up with the diplomatically ideal situation – as Sir Stephen Wall predicted and as Jon Worth criticised…

Charlemagne in the Economist did an excellent blog, summing up the message from the summit thus:

So, it seems the people of the European Union—or at least their leaders—want to live in an inward-looking fortress, not an outward looking global power. And they want Britain—one of only two countries with any ambitions to project military power across long distances—to help build a defence and security policy for that fortress.

 He pointed out that the sort of approach taken is likely to result in a lowest common denominator appointment. He’s right. 
The experience of the appointees was perhaps not the most expansive on offer, and while this is unlikely to be a problem for Von Rompuy who is the Council’s choice as their President and therefore needs no further confirmation, Cathy Ashton still has to be affirmed by the European Parliament (her role is a joint Council and Commission role, so she has to be confirmed as part of the Commission by the EP as is required by Treaty). 
Will the EP cause trouble?  I think it’s unlikely given the balance issue I set out above.  Besides shes one of the 9 – yes, 9 as campagined for by www.genderbalancedcommission.eu – women in the next Commission.  Despite what you read, her gender would not I think be of itself enough to stop her being opposed  -  Ingrida Udre, Lavia’s first choice in 2004 who was eventually replaced by the senior official originally proposed as her Chef de Cabinet Adris Piebalgs, was a woman but it didn’t stop her nomination being, alongside that of Rocco Butiglione, one of the ones that were considered so inappropriate by the European Parliament that they threatened not to approve the 2004 Barroso Commission unless specific nominees were withdrawn and others proposed instead.
A small aside on the EP here: I wonder if it is true that some heads of state are not happy with the level of influence that the 2 largest pan-European political groupings had on the appointments process for these two roles? 
It’s notable from the press coverage that it is not through head-of-government-to-head-of-government persuasion and negotiation that Cathy Ashton was proposed for her role but by securing her as the PES candidate for one of these two posts.  If the Euorpean political grouings are playing such a significant role, given that the UK Conservative Party belongs to neither the EPP nor the PES, we can only wonder what could have been done to get either a) a Brit or b) a candidate with an understanding of the UK’s national interests into positions of prominence within the Council or Commission if these nominations had been happening in 6 months time?

So is the appointment of these two a sign of the failure of the EU to get anything right?
I think it’s quite interesting that people opposed to the EU are arguing that this is wrong because they didn’t get to vote for Van Rompuy – there was no election, what does he stand for etc.?  And yet, during the discussions that took place in the development of the Consitutional Treaty (that’s the one that got rejected by the French and Dutch and therefore did not enter into force, being replaced by the Lisbon Treaty) an elected Presidential role was thought to be akin to conferring statehood and so was rejected. 
The antis are in danger of strawman-building… calling the Council President the EU President which he isn’t, then complaining they didn’t get to vote for him so his role is undemocratic when his role isn’t what they fear it is because they won that part of the argument… perhaps they don’t understand that they won?  Or perhaps nothing short of UK-EU withdrawal is a win?
Of course, genuine federalists (that is not the same as uncritical europhiles of whom I know very few indeed) are also unhappy with the Council President role and appointment process. 
But I agree with the European Citizen – attempts to run a “vote” online were misguided because on what were “voters” supposed to make a decision?  There were no manifestos, no real candidates (other than Juncker for the Council President role) and no presentations.  But direct election would’ve turned the post more legitimately into what the sceptics feared.
Or is it a sign that – given the adoption of a Swedish Presidency comminique defining the Council President role in terms more akin to chairmanship than a traffic-stopping leader – power primarily continues to rest with the Heads of State and Government? 
And isn’t that  just as those that don’t think that the EU should be a single state (I resist saying federal because federal means power devolved to the most appropriate level but somehow seems to be getting confused with a centralised, bureaucratic structure with most power at the top…) prefer? 
And doesn’t that seems to be the position of the majority of heads of state and government?
It doesn’t seem to matter how much those that understand the EU as it is explain that the French don’t want to be less French or the Germans less German when even this sort of role-minimisation of the Council President doesn’t convince.  European Council chairman and developer of the work programme (along with the Commission that holds the right of initiative on legislative proposals) hardly sounds like kingship to me…

It is of course an irony that the man that got the top job is probably the most “federalist” (in the technically incorrect sense) EU leader.  But then there’s a good chance he would be – he’s Belgian and Belgian politicians have been known to call for EU solutions in the past to things that are actually national problems.  But what can he actually do?
He has been known to call for EU-wide taxation, but he cannot impose it without the will of the Member States. 
I haven’t checked but I bet there’s a Verhofstadt style quote about wanting a European army out there somewhere too – there often seems to be from those who are not defenders of neutrality but don’t actually have many troops to contribute to NATO or EU-led missions (does Belgian National Day still have the troops-and-armaments parades? It did as recently as 2005).
More importantly, he’s commented that Turkey shouldn’t join the EU - but then both Sarkozy and Merckel markedly lack enthusiasm so we’re back to national leaders being more important…

It’ll be interesting to see the details of the external action service (EU foreign office network) and how it interacts with existing EU Member state representation abroad – the quote from Charlemagne above gives an interesting interpretation of the role that the UK can have over EU foreign policy by dint of the High Representative being a UK national as that’s not how I’d thoguht about the appointment.

But I think it’s safe to say that if you put the most “federalist” EU leader into a role where he’s beholden to the Member States to get business through, set out a definition of the top job as more chairman than President (which is after all in Brussels meetings simply the French for chairman in any case), and seek to balance lots of interests rather than interview or elect on the basis of the best person for the job, you are hardly setting up a superstate…

Enlightened Euroscepticism requires the enlightenment bit…

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eu with light

Henry Porter in the Observer yesterday talked about enlightened Euroscepticism.
His argument would be easier to accept if he hadn’t confused the European Court of Human Rights and its ruling on the display of crucifixes in Italian schools with the EU and standardisation.
He says “the crucifix is none of the EU’s business” and he is right.  It isn’t and wasn’t.
(Even if the EU is about the accede to ECHR).

He talks about the the appointment of a President of the Council in these terms: “the point is that the coronation will take place without the involvement of the people at the very moment when Europe marks the most significant and peaceful revolution in history”.  This makes me feel unspeakably angry for a number of reasons:
i) appointing a Council President is not a coronation – Henry Porter has either bought the lie or has not actually bothered to do more that read the UK press coverage of the role;
ii)  there’s a number of Presidents in the European context (Commission and European Parliament Presidents already exist).  Each heads an EU institution, each has a specific role in the overall EU institutional and decision-making process.  It seems unlikely that they would respond positively to a huge swing of power and influence towards the role of the Council (one of the EP’s favourite experssions is “inter-institutional balance”).  So I would expect that the postholders would go some way towards keeping a new “upstart” President in his or her place if they start seeing themselves in a more monarchistic light;
iii) Electing a President of the Council would be rather like directly electing a Nancy Pelosi type figure – charismatic, known internationally but more influential than powerful so how many people would bother to turn out.  As far as I can see, a directly elected by the EU populace President could not be simply a President of the Council.
iv) to invoke the anniversary of being 20 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall to imbue the declaration that it is a coronation with added significance as if it is the installation of an absolutist monarchy over all EU Member States, with echoes of totalitarianism is insulting to the reader, to common sense and to the memory of that incredible event.  

Look – there was a chance, in the Constitutional Treaty and then in the Lisbon Treaty to have a directly-elected President of the EU.  But the Member State governments, who agree a text and then seek ratification in their own countries depending on the system that they use for this sort of process (parliamentary approval or public referendum), didn’t go for that.  They agreed to a lesser role, in one of the three main institutions rather than sitting above them all and hardly a symbol of superstatehood. 
The constant assertion that the role is the supreme leader role needs to be challenged whenever it is made – that is an argument that has already been overcome. 
Why can’t sceptics accept that what they’ve got is already a victory? Oh yes. Because we’ve forgotten what scepticism means!
As Julien Frisch said in his tongue-in-cheek guide to becoming a successful Euroblogger, it seems to be generally assumed that the world is divided into “Federalists” that are pro-European, and sceptics/ realists that are anti-EU. 
I would argue – as would Julien, Jon Worth, Nosemonkey and a host of other Eurobloggers that enlightened scepticism is actually the position that we all seem to hold: we support the concept of the EU but don’t believe it necessarily operates in the ideal way. 
We may not have a shared view over how and what it should do things differently, but the sooner we in the UK come to terms with the idea that being sceptical about something is not the same as being hostile to it, and that you can be broadly favouable towards something in cencept as well as sceptical about its execeution then the more measured, sensible and ulitimately effective and constructive a debate we can have.
So Henry Porter is right: “scepticism is not about being a little England Tory or any of the other nonsense spouted by French Euro-enthusiasts last week; it is sounding a note of caution, reserving judgement and not being in the interests of the common good”. 
The behaviours the French Europe Minister described would certainly not be “sceptical” behaviours if we are using the word properly.
I would add that a decent dash of scepticism is vital to get an approach to life verging on “everything in moderation”. 
Henry Porter is also right that people have to take responsibility and that the role of the people in a democracy is something that should not ignored.

But detail matters too.  And how can the people take informed decsions when they’re given distorted pictures on which to form their views?
So please – journalists, subs, editors, proprietors.  We understand that your first job is to write stories that sell papers or get ratings.  This is not always completely compatible with accuracy.  
And sometimes, as I would hope is the case with Henry Porter’s article, it may be uninformed error rather than deliberate innacuracy that leds to this sort of rant from bloggers.
But democracy itself is affected by what you say, what you publish (you’ve even boasted about this in the past e.g. “It was the Sun wot won it”).  You owe it to your readers to act responsibly. And the occasional full article correction, rather than burying corrections away near the letters page or just not bothering would really be a start.        

Update: excellent guide to the various Councils now available on Nosemonkey’s EUtopia blog. Fab stuff indeed.