Spanish foreign minister Miguel Moratinos made a rather revealing comment in the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament this morning. Pleading for more time to answer the 1000 questions MEPs insist on asking at once, he said: “I think the rotating presidency should have some privileges, especially in the European Parliament.” And this laced with a tinge of exasperation.

It nicely sums up difficulty of this so-called ‘transition’ EU presidency for its top actors – the recently (US) jilted prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Spain’s top diplomat. They want a role but they are not really supposed to have a role.

The rotating presidency is not gone – it was just (openly) hidden in the complex folds of the Lisbon Treaty, upon us now, in all its foreign policy nebulousness, for a whole two months.

But the six-month presidency is supposed to operate behind the scenes, doing much of the policy spadework but for little of the glory. Herman Van Rompuy, as EU council president, and Catherine Ashton, as the EU’s foreign policy chief, are now the main actors. That is going to take some getting used to.

As Spain is the first to hold the job under the Lisbon Treaty, it is being given some leeway. It  will host a bilateral summit with Latin America and it made a truly valiant photo-stealing attempt at holding the EU-US summit, while Moratinos, until now at least, has felt no particular restraint on speaking out on foreign policy issues.

I went along to the committee this morning because I was curious to hear how Moratinos would behave, down, as he was, to present the foreign policy priorities of the Spanish presidency. He started off by saying he fully “wholeheartedly supported”   Ashton – who sent him to the committee – and noting that his people are in constant contact with hers on issues “where she perhaps can’t deliver.”Ho hum.

And then he made an interesting distinction. “I can’t talk about a Spanish presidency for CFSP” he said but added that there are some areas where Spain “would like to focus more attention.” These include enlargement and neighbourhood policy (the eastern partnership and Mediterranean Union) and Africa.

So this is how it might be in the future. It appears, politically speaking at least, inconceivable that the foreign ministers of future EU presidencies do not have any role. But Moratinos seems to be laying the path for future presidencies to concentrate on a few areas that are not foreign policy exactly but more neighbourhood relations and things of interest in that particular presidency’s back yard.

Well time will tell. But for the moment, little appears to have changed. After his committee appearance, I tried to ask Moratinos a question on what role he thought the foreign ministers of future EU presidencies would have. But I was trampled out of the microphone space by other journalists keen to ask questions on the EU’s position on Syria and other issues. Moratinos happily obliged.

But, I have to say Catherine Ashton is making it a bit too easy for him to expand upon issues as he pleases.  I have defended her on these pages and I continue to do so. She is a novice in a huge and difficult new job, so she needs time. Yet today I read an interview with her in the Financial Times, in which she said precisely nothing at all. If you give an interview with the best-read newspaper in Brussels, you say something. Come on Lady Ashton, stop hiding! You are the foreign policy face of the EU.

So US  president Barack Obama may not bother to come to the EU-US summit after all. Whatever he ultimately decides, the prospect of his visit has certainly been putting the EU’s brand new foreign policy structures under quite a strain.

Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wanted him in Madrid. EU council president Herman Van Rompuy had pleaded for Brussels. The new Lisbon Treaty, just two months in place, leaves open where bilateral summits with third countries should be held. The head says Brussels. But the heart – at least the Spanish (political) heart – says Madrid.

And just when it appeared that the EU’s players had sorted this inglorious little tussle out  – the May summit is to be in Madrid  but after Spain’s EU presidency such summits will be held in Brussels (say Van Rompuy’s people anyway) – the White House has indicated it won’t play ball. Oddly enough.

The Wall Street Journal quotes various US officials as saying that the US had never intended to come to the summit; the decision was due to the EU’s own dilemma over where the summit should be; Obama’s domestic political troubles meant he would not be taking the time or laying the blame on his heavy travel schedule.  Last year, the US president travelled to Europe six times.

Certainly the EU, going over and beyond the location problems, has not helped its case. As Spiegel Online reported over the weekend, the antics are exercising the minds of protocol specialists. Who should sit next to whom? And who gets to shake Obama’s hand first? According to the German news website, Van Rompuy’s people have suggested that Zapatero should shake Obama’s hand first while Van Rompuy gets to sit on his right during dinner. Zapatero would sit opposite him, although, alas, this would mean no camera exposure for the Spanish prime minister.

But whatever the final decision – and nobody seems sure of anything yet – the potential no-show does concentrate the minds somewhat.

It would be a significant symbolic blow if Obama were to decide not to come to the first bilateral summit after the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, which after all, is supposed to fix the EU’s foreign policy representation and make it a serious player on the world stage.

(For the record, EU diplomats are saying that as Spain put so much effort into preparing its calendar for the presidency, it should be given some slack on this issue.   And everywhere else, it seems. Spanish foreign minister Miguel Moratinos is far from taking a backseat role on foreign policy issues, although technically, it’s now Catherine Ashton’s job. After the Spanish presidency, things will assume their proper Lisbon-ish form, say the same diplomats. Hmm, I say start as you mean to go on or others (EU presidencies) will continue in the same disruptive vein.)

The  current preoccupation with how visible the EU is in Haiti is utterly unpleasant. Now, in the middle of such human misery and loss, is not the time to be worried about whether EU helpers are as noticed as those from the US. What matters is that Haitians get aid, not whether the European Union gets visibility for its buck.

Yet the issue is gathering legs. Catherine Ashton’s non-appearance on the devastated island was the springboard for the discontent. She first was criticized by MEPs for not going there. Then French officials took up the cudgels. Internal market commissioner-to-be Michel Barnier, according to the widely-read Coulisses de Bruxelles, let it be known that he was on the spot directly after the Tsunami struck in 2004.

The issue hung heavily over the EU meeting of foreign ministers on Monday, which Ashton was chairing for the first time.

“What was certainly missing was (EU) visibility right away, a flag right away, EU police badges next to the US ones,” France’s European Affairs Minister Pierre Lellouche said after the meeting.

Until then it was mainly French grumbling. (Barnier, it should be noted, is smarting because a report he drew up looking at improving the EU’s crisis response following the Tsunami experience was never taken up. The report devoted much ink to the importance of being able to see the EU’s 12 golden stars in areas in need of disaster relief.)

But yesterday the European Commission jumped on the bandwagon. Once it is up and running, the new commission will prepare “proposals to improve further the EU’s crisis response capability,” said a spokesperson. This will allow the European Union to benefit from a “higher visibility” for its relief efforts, she added.

It is unclear how much of the “visibility” rhetoric has to do with simple dislike of Ashton. Her less-than-stellar start was, in my opinion, entirely predictable given the size of her new job and the way she came to it. But it is grist to mill of those who were hostile to her from the very beginning. She has now been driven to defend her Haiti decisions, giving an interview to French paper Le Figaro.

In any case, it does not become the EU – justifiably proud of it donor reputation – to use the ongoing Haiti misery for point scoring against Ashton or as a convenient vehicle for boosting a bit of hitherto dormant political will for its crisis response unit.

European Commission policy-makers believe EU leaders are finally seeing things with clearer eyes. The financial crisis and its after-effects, China’s growing economic and political assertiveness, and globalization, have finally brought home to member states the power dynamics of a globalised world.

Slowly waking up to this fact throughout last year, the point was rammed home at the Copenhagen climate summit in December where the EU – brimming with good intentions -  was clearly not a player.

This is good news, say those drawing up the successor to the 2000-2010 Lisbon Strategy – a catalogue of (largely ignored)  targets to improve education, innovation and research in a bid to catch up with the US.  It means that member states may now consider deeper economic cooperation, something they rejected out hand when the issue was last seriously discussed in 2004.

The commission is planning to make sure that the new ten year strategy – Europe 2020 – stays on EU leaders’ political radars. Overseeing the Lisbon Strategy was carried out by those lower down the political foodchain, seen as a major contribution to its failure.

EU policy makers say they do not envision sanctions in the new strategy – as had been suggested by EU presidency Spain – and note, for concerned German ears, that greater economic governance does not mean having political control over the European Central Bank.

But the commission, which plans to have a formal proposal by the March EU council following discussion with member states on 11 February, says this decade’s strategy should have some bite.

By using the “letter and the spirit” of the Lisbon Treaty (Art. 120-122) , in force since 1 December, the EU will be able to pull up member states for poor performance.  Article 121.4 allows the commission to issue warnings and policy recommendations to member states that fall behind on the economic targets. “Some of these parts we are going to use very soon,” said a senior policy-maker, referring to the three articles.

The belief is that a more economically powerful bloc is needed to better negotiate with new powers China, India and Brazil – including on climate change targets. It is not enough to go to such summits armed only with optimism when the EU has insufficient economic and political leverage, say clear-eyed officials. Finally.

Meanwhile, the Lisbon Treaty may also provide answers in the Greek case, should the troubled country default on its debts. While EU law does not allow bail-outs, Article 122.2 says that

“Where a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control, the council, on a proposal from the commission, may grant, under certain conditions, union financial assistance to the member state concerned.“

Should it ever come to a default, the financial crisis should qualify as an “exceptional occurrence,” leading EU sources to say that solving Greece’s fiscal problems is within the Union’s capacity.

Recently there has been much talk, but little action, on renewing Franco-German relations.

This is largely due to the leaders of the two countries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy are profoundly different in political style and nature. This is evident in their approach to developing Franco-German ties. Paris tends to see Berlin as being standoffish while German officials believe the French are playing at gesture politics.

Sarkozy’s suggestion last year, for example, to have a joint ministry was met with a certain amount of  eye-rolling in Berlin.

There have been several other well-documented differences along the way, not least concerning the best way to tackle the financial and economic crisis.

While it’ll never be a meeting of political minds, lately there have been efforts to work at the relationship. Sarkozy’s attendance at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November followed by Merkel’s trip to the French capital two days later to commemorate Armistice were both hugely symbolic.

Next week, this symbolism is supposed to be backed up by something of substance. French Europe minister Pierre Lellouche and his German counterpart Werner Hoyer have submitted a letter to their political masters containing 16 guidelines and 40 concrete proposals to rejolt the bilateral ties, reports Le Monde. Sarkozy and Merkel are to pick the ones they want to run with and make them public at the next Franco-German council on 4 February.

The suggestions run from diplomacy to the economy to cooperation in science. According to Hoyer the Franco-German relationship “needs to put itself at Europe’s service” and here is Lellouche’s take on the situation in an interview with Le Figaro:

“The reality is that the friendship between our two countries is without equal in Europe or in the rest of the world. If there is no agreement between France and Germany, not a great deal happens in Europe. And when we reach agreement, we draw in everyone. Our two countries don’t have extra rights over others but they have, given history, a particular responsibility to serve Europe. At the beginning of this 21st century, their accord could allow Europe to exist with globalisation. It is not easy because our companies are often in competition and our two countries do not function in the same way. But what is essential is that a willingness exists at the highest level on both sides.”

The EU certainly needs some sort of a shot in the arm. Sidelined at the Copenhagen climate summit, unsure in its response to the economic crisis and only slowly realising that the long-heralded Lisbon Treaty is not a solution in itself but only provides some tools for better policy and external representation, the Union is urgently in need of some internal dynamism.

Some signals that France and Germany will get behind an ambitious plan for the EU’s next ten year economic strategy; will back the EU’s new foreign policy set-up (at the moment its chief diplomat is under fire for her response to the Haiti earthquake) and have further shared ideas for how to emerge from the economic crisis would be a start.

What a protracted exit! Rumiana Jeleva has finally gone. The surprise was that it took so long. The Bulgarian foreign minister was ready to throw in the towel and generally renounce politics directly after her disastrous hearing last week, but was persuaded by fellow members of the centre-right European People’s Party to stay.

The EPP, it seems, was willing to overlook her obvious incompetence in the hearing in favour of grabbing the moral highground for the way the session was conducted. Instead of focussing on her weak policy answers, they looked at the fact that Eva Joly, the head of the development committee in charge of the three-hour hearing, allowed a bit of a free-for-all during the first 50 minutes, where questioning largely focussed on Jeleva’s unclear financial interests.

The EPP then compounded the situation by obviously looking for payback from another political party, choosing the Socialist Slovak commissioner Maros Sefcovic to take the fall – although Sefcovic seems to have emerged unscathed from his hearing on Monday.

Neither did the EPP’s decision to prop up Jeleva after her hearing do Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso any favours. Several editorials today have criticised Barroso for not learning the (Rocco Buttiglione) lessons of 2004 and withdrawing his support from Jeleva. Left wing and green MEPs have had a field day talking about how politically deaf Barroso is.

But I am not sure what he could have done in his situation. After all Jeleva was the foreign minister of a member state. Could he really have jumped in with both feet and agreed she was useless – before the parliament’s development committee had even pronounced on her? To what end exactly?

His letter of supposed support on Friday was not particularly supportive. By leaving out any mention of how she performed in her hearing and underlining obliquely that he has no intelligence service to look into her declaration of financial interests, it was clear he had abandoned her. It was only a matter of time before she went.

Nobody comes out of last week’s events smelling of roses. But the Bulgarian government looks the worst. How did Rumiana Jeleva become foreign minister of the country in the first place? And why did Sofia then foist her upon Brussels when apparently they had another woman candidate with substantial policy experience all along?

The room was packed. With MEPs and with high expectations. But Catherine Ashton, almost hoarse by the end of Monday’s three hour grilling on her suitability to be the EU’s top diplomat, was bound to disappoint.

Just five weeks into a job – as the EU’s new more powerful foreign policy chief – that is likely to require at least a year or two of growing into the role, she was circumspect on most issues, ignorant of a few others and most comfortable pledging to involve the parliament in her new role and fighting her corner against UK Tory MEPs.

“We want more for Europe’s foreign minister than you yourself want,” said a German MEP towards the end of the session which saw questions on Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the US and Russia. The statement rather summed up her policy plight just now.

For while Ashton had obviously done a lot of the foreign policy cramming required over the Christmas period and she avoided major gaffes, her answers necessarily had the sense of newly-learnt policies.

Nuance, seeing the broader picture, and a vision of where she or the EU could be, or could go, on certain key foreign issues – all of which MEPs wanted – was missing.

But this is not really surprising. Such policy confidence requires time and a surer sense of where member states themselves want to go (rarely a clear policy given). A person with previous foreign policy and diplomat experience might have struggled to provide what MEPs were looking for. Ms Ashton, who was catapulted into this post largely by virtue of a deal between the main European political parties, has neither.

This probably accounts for her naïve, though honest, answer to a question on her thoughts on the reform of the United Nations Security Council. “The answer is I don’t know. This has not even crossed into my thinking… You’ve caught me out. Well done.”

MEPs tripped her up on detail concerning Afghanistan where she erroneously suggested there were EU troops, while she said she did not know the answers to two questions on Somalia and illegal fishing and Eritrea. While these could be put down to depth and breadth of the issues she has to get to grip with,  a particularly jarring point came – after she made a point of laying out her commitment to human rights – when she said did not know that EU Sakharov prize winner Lyudmila Alexeyeva had been arrested.

Ashton’s manner is open and self-deprecating and she showed the same glimpses of steel as the beginning of December when British Conservatives attacked her over her CND past. When on sure ground – as she was here – she is fluent and persuasive. She was also firm in telling MEPs that she would not bow to their wish to put senior diplomats for the diplomatic service through hearings in the parliament.

Her hearing only confirmed what an enormous job she has before her – not least tempering expectation with reality – and the limits of reading up on foreign policy. She will need to practise it,  and for some time, to become fluent at it.

Keep your hands off my new commission was president Jose Manuel Barroso’s message during his third question hour in parliament on Tuesday.

Austrian Socialist deputy Hannes Swoboda wanted to know if Barroso was “in principle” ready to accept that commissioners’ portfolios could be swapped if MEPs deemed it necessary during hearings in January.

As if Barroso was going to voluntarily let that genie out of the bottle again.  “We should concentrate more on matters of policy (and) of substance,” he sniffed before reminding the (near-empty) chamber that after five years he’s in a safe enough position to judge how to internally organise the commission.

But it was a curiously anemic exchange. Martin Schulz, leader of the Socialists and always good for a fight – whether one is warranted or not – sat slumped in his chair.

The topic de jour – the 2020 economic strategy – did make an appearance and in Barroso’s case always in the same sentence as “full ownership.” This is shorthand for making it painful for member states not to hold to their strategic promises. Alas, this appears more difficult than actually drawing up the strategy itself. There should be ways of “measuring progress” said Barroso vaguely at one stage.

If any member state held a Minaret-building referendum, à la Suisse, asked far-right MEP Marine Le Pen at one point, would the result be recognized by the EU? That’s a hypothetical question, said Mr Barroso dismissively. No it’s not, she replied.

There followed a brief grammar lesson.

“My French may not be as good as yours,” began Barroso - a sentence construction which always indicates the user believes the opposite – “If you use the word ‘if’, that’s a hypothetical question.”

And the rules of the game remain something of a mystery.  Please tell me you can see that I want to ask a question so I can stop jumping around, begged a deputy in the middle of the debate. At one point, the blue card – which people can hold up in order to spontaneously contribute a word – could not be used “because it is a discussion between two people,” said EP chief Jerzy Buzek, apparently trying to make things clearer.

He pleaded (twice), futilely as it turned out, for MEPs to consider whether two questions really can be answered in one minute. “Don’t give two questions in two minutes. Which (question of yours) do you prefer?” The deputy concerned evidently considered both his questions to be gems.

Buzek might also have referred to lengthy or dramatic introductions to questions – perhaps next time. “Even in the dark days of recession, you can dream of utopia,” began one MEP breathlessly.

One hour a month of skating over a multitude of topics is apparently not enough however. MEPs want more face-time with the commission president. At the end of the session, a British MEP reminded Barroso that he has a “huge salary.” Surely one that merited at least 30 more minutes of question time, he queried rather belligerently.

There was a small pause to let that one sink in.

“Mr President Barroso is smiling very politely. But we have to see about that,” said Buzek. Actually, it was Buzek who was being polite at that particular juncture. You couldn’t see Barroso for the dust.