The passing of the six-month rotating presidency system into the annals of EU history come the Lisbon Treaty will mark the end of one interesting tradition – the raising of hitherto-unknown-beyond-their-own-borders EU leader to political celebrity status. Albeit temporarily.
Take the current Czech PM Jan Fischer. Until yesterday, journalists hung on his every word. Today, I imagine, he could roll all of the Czech presidency’s gaffes into one long EU-torpedoing sentence and he might get a line in the Czech news agency.
Now prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is in the hot seat. Every word he utters will be treated as the EU’s approach to that issue. His predictions on the economic crisis and a climate change deal will be headlines in themselves.
That is the trade off for the half-year running of the union, which requires massive resources, political, diplomatic, organisational and monetary. The leader of the moment gets to opine on all sorts of issues (no particular expertise is required) and he or she gets to hobnob with the Obamas and the Putins of this world.
And each presidency brings with it its own particular traditions – the Swedes are pushy on transparency and have relatively good green credentials.
The Lisbon Treaty, which ostensibly puts an end to the EU’s external relations circus, turns the presidency into a trio-run thing over a period of 18 months. It is not the leader of the country holding the presidency that will hold forth on all things EU but the new EU president.
So for the presidency country it looks like it will be all grind and no shine.
I am curious to see how this plays out in practice. Assuming the Lisbon Treaty is ratified in autumn and goes into place on 1 January next year, Spain will be the first country holding the presidency but without the starring role.
Much has been made of the Czechs somewhat haphazard presidency where both the message and the messenger at times teetered on the brink of the farcical.
But I am not yet convinced that the new system won’t throw up the same range of absurdities and grandstanding as the present one. Is there enough room on the European stage for a European president, an EU foreign minister and an EU commission president – all to some degree externally representing the EU? And what of the presidency trio exactly?
#1 by al on July 1st, 2009 - 10:29 pm
Transparency? Would that be defined via the Stockholm Programme, where being transparent means surrender of personal privacy…? As for “green credentials”, defining “green” in the context of the IPCC is the embracing of pseudo-science and the “new age” of secularised Gaia-worship.
The positions of European president, foreign minister and commission president are currently defined by the slippery slope of declining freedom and increasing authoritarianism in the EU—all positions thereof are, like the status quo, appointed and unaccountable to the public. What makes it worse is that the power gets concentrated in fewer hands. Why cannot the executive be elected? Thus far, the EU has been one of the greatest expressions of the rule of man versus the rule of law. Should this allow to continue, or should it be stopped in its tracks?
#2 by JL on July 2nd, 2009 - 11:47 am
Massive resources? Even countries as small as Luxembourg can carry out the responsibilities of a Presidency successfully provided, and it is a big proviso, national politicians grasp the fact that what is required is a core of about 200 effective chairpersons.
Highjacking the rotating presidency to promote national prestige and objectives has been a feature of all Presidencies. Of the many meetings that take place outside the places of work of the EU (Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg), none are formally required and the cost, appropriately, falls to the Member State that chooses to host them.
The phenomenon is one of the strongest arguments for abandoning the system of rotating presidencies.
#3 by David Ben-Ariel on July 2nd, 2009 - 12:55 pm
Transparency sounds good, but don’t trust politicians to deliver it. President usurper Obama/Soetoro/Obama has failed to be transparent with his original (long form) birth certificate, school records, passport records and immigration records. Why, if he has nothing to hide? Clearly, Obama/Soetoro/Obama appears to be a shady character engaged in mass deception, disrespecting We The People, treating our Constitution with contempt, and hell-bent on destroying our Republic.
#4 by al on July 2nd, 2009 - 5:15 pm
…in favour of what? Fewer persons, with more power than their predecessors, serving for terms ten times longer in duration, and in appointed positions to boot (as the Lisbon Treaty proposes)?
The EU’s pseudodemocracy was set up as a mockery of true democracy—it works in the exact reverse manner, with the executive making the laws and passing them, and the parliament not being a legislature. Frankly, if the “national prestige” of individual member states do not get raised on the stage (as ineffectual as it may be), then but one member state will rise to the fore and dominate. (Maggie Thatcher pointed out which one, back in ‘95; it’s the one she said whose “national character is to dominate…)
#5 by Fiddling Recession on July 3rd, 2009 - 9:32 am
Nowadays, we are in the fast pacing world. But the problem now in our society is that we try to run after time! (It’s as if we don’t have enough time in the world to do what we really like to do. That’s why, we are creating chaos in the world! Why don’t we slow down a bit? At least, we can feel the pleasure of living. Actually, the author, philosopher, historian, and mathematician Bertrand Russell once wrote an essay called In Praise of Idleness, and we often forget the simple pleasure of writing a poem or doing crosswords in the paper, or reading someone’s memoirs, if it’s interesting enough. (The recollections of a business software engineer wouldn’t count – boring!). In modern life, we too often are caught up in work or whether or not to get an online payday loan, and forget to take time to do nothing.
#6 by al on July 5th, 2009 - 2:28 am
BTW, looks like some spambots have gotten past the CAPTCHA screen. Whom should we contact?
#7 by Marcel on July 9th, 2009 - 2:23 pm
To appoint people in unelected and unaccountable positions is what the EU has always been about. It was build so that national parliaments could be bypassed (more or less) whilst all the way keeping up the pretence of a ‘democratic’ process.
Monnet (who utterly despised democracy) planned to destroy all democracy but at the same time fool the peoples by letting the democratic national institutions continue to exist. The idea was, that people would be fooled by that. National parliaments and governments however were to lose all its powers and those were to be transferred and centralized in Brussels in the hands of a mutually appointed unaccountable class. All touched up by applying a fake layer of ‘democracy’ by having some meaningless ‘Parliament’ elected (note: the process of election does not automatically make the elected democratic).
And touting someone’s ‘green’ credentials, is liek touting someone’s fascist credentials. The word ‘green’ is used to cover up fascist policies such as regulating food/drink and controlling how much people can drive or fly aeroplane (regulations are coming, fascist road charging schemes dreamt up by the EU Reich are coming, what do you think Galileo is for?).
I despise ‘green’ politicians.
Reinfeldt does not speak for me, nor does the EU. No democratic legitimacy whatsoever. I didn’t elect Reinfeldt or corrupt clown Barroso.