These are ridiculous times. On the one hand you have politicians saying – with a perfectly straight face – that the new posts in the Lisbon Treaty will give the EU a more coherent presence on the world stage. And on the other hand, you have the nomination process for these posts – a lesson in incoherency and obfuscation.
At this stage, the eve of a summit where this is all supposed to be agreed, it is anybody’s guess who will be nominated the EU’s first president of the European Council and who will become its top diplomat.
Member states are engaged in an unedifying search for candidates who tick the right boxes. The important boxes are nationality and political family. An apparently lesser box – a nice-if-we-can-get-it-box – is gender-balance.
And after all that, there is not much room left for considerations of competency.
And as for what member states want the president to do and project about Europe, that remains the great unknown. Should it be an internal fixer or someone of global stature? I am not sure at what stage the actual job description will enter the negotiations on Thursday. How the president and foreign policy chief should rub along together is also unclear.
I was struck by something an EU diplomat said to me the other day. We were talking about the search for the EU president, a post that may be held for up to five years. “Look,” he said, “Jacques Delors came from nowhere and turned out to be a really strong [European Commission] president, who got things done.”
That just about sums the whole sorry process up. The horse-trading might, as a fortuitous spin-off, see the union land on its feet in terms of candidates.
The two people chosen may be able to work out among themselves how to make a go of their respective jobs without falling out; work out how to get along with big member states and a commission president who also like foreign policy; and give the EU the credibility it craves on the world stage.
But then again they may not. Who knows? And who really cares? Apparently not the hagglers sitting around the dinner table tomorrow night.
#1 by Wickus on November 18, 2009 - 12:18 pm
Foreign Policy chief must stay with Javier Solana. He is not doing a bad job for the past 10 years. Best too keep him on to take the EU in the right direction.
#2 by DOCM on November 18, 2009 - 5:52 pm
The two jobs were insisted upon by the larger Member States and by elites in their capitals that had no idea of how the European Community repeat Community actually functioned. They failed to make the connection between the various jobs: President of the European Council (PEC), the High Representative/Vice-President (HRVP), President of the Commissionn (PC) and the posts of Commissioner (C). The current circus and inability to come to an early agreement is the direct result of that failure, especially to cop on to the fact that the country getting the HRVP job would have to cede a sitting Commissioner post. (This is the position in which Nellie Smit Kroes and Almunia now find themselves).
An added, and supreme irony, is that the sorcerers’ apprentices concerned have put the President of the Commission in the position of kingmaker as they cannot move until they know what jobs will be available in the Commission.
The UK is playing this weakness for all its worth with very likelihood of getting a top Commission slot as a result.
The obvious solution, and that which should have been adopted in the first place, was to agree to have the President of the Commission chair the European Council when it was discussing matters of Community competence and the HRVP when it was dealing with intergovernmental matters in relation to the CFSP/CSDP.
But that would have been infra dig. But is the present likely outcome any less so?
#3 by enfant.terrible on November 19, 2009 - 2:36 am
So, Ms. Mahony an idea of interviewing candidates for High Representative wasn’t that bad as You wrote in other post with a bit of irony, was it?As I see, heavy stereotyphical thinking make it impossible to deal with constructive criticsm.
#4 by reuben on November 19, 2009 - 2:16 pm
Enfant.terrible, I don’t think Honor indicated that looking for a qualified candidate was a bad thing. Doing this however through interviews is, as Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski admitted, political suicide for all candidates that do not make it. The reasoning behind the suggestion makes sense, but the suggestion itself was not properly thought through.
#5 by horny vamp manure on November 19, 2009 - 4:09 pm
Why this use of ‘horse-trading’ when it comes to EU negotiations? Horse traders will usually handle deals in an open auction, with their goods clearly on show, and — sometimes — will offer thoroughbreds with a strong track record and the necessary balls to perform.
The Commission cabinet is usually a knacker’s yard for superannuated nags, saved last-minute from the glue factory of domestic politics.
#6 by Marcel on November 20, 2009 - 11:20 am
I don’t know why but I am enjoying this spectacle and the ‘appointment’ of mr and mrs colourless.
Ok I lie, I do know.