Archive for January, 2010

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.