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.
#1 by Anonymous on January 11th, 2010 - 10:43 pm
Don’t cry for Ms. Alexeyeva. People were holding New Years celebrations when she and her group butted in and protested. Obviously she wanted to get arrested, so this isn’t even like Copenhagen. It is interesting that she was with Eduard Limonov, head of the National Bolshevik Party whose party symbols morph the Nazi swastika with the Communist sickle and hammer, and these people are finding support from Polish MEPs.
#2 by Anonymous on January 11th, 2010 - 11:49 pm
NBP is banned in Russia. Limonov is always referred to as an opposition activist without noting his ideology in the Western media. There were maybe 50 protesters there, so Alexeyeva (and Kasparov, etc.) knew who she was with. These people are jokes and they were trying to interrupt a party. I just had to correct the typical manipulation in the blog post.
#3 by mmm on January 12th, 2010 - 9:40 am
Were we in the same room? For me it was the MEPs who disapointed. Scattergun questions put badly and with no development of an argument. Political groups should be better organised if they want these to be genuinely interesting and useful sessions.
#4 by Jean-Baptiste Perrin on January 12th, 2010 - 10:37 am
To our courageous Anonymous poster, I will only say: it is always a shame to arrest an opposition militant who has done nothing wrong. Demonstrating, even on New Year’s celebration is nothing wrong. As for the presence of Mister Limonov, it is certainly unfortunate, but I can imagine that oppositions groups can’t really forbid other groups to join them.
#5 by french derek on January 12th, 2010 - 12:00 pm
I know that Lady Ashton has been an EU Commissioner for a short time, but (to me) she appeared to have a typical UK knowledge (ie not much) of what the EU is about – or could be about. She was too much of a “mustn’t upset the masters” technocrat; not enough of “her own person”, with guts.
If she carries out her duties in the same, low-key vein, the EU will stay a nonentity on the world stage (just reflect on Copenhagen).
#6 by Marcel on January 12th, 2010 - 7:31 pm
The more of a non-entity she is, the better it is. No one elected her anyway.
We resistance fighters against totalitarian EU (Reich IV) delayed ‘Lisbon’ for 8 years, and our next fight shall so begin. Like the 39-45 resistance, we too will ultimately prevail against the undemocratic forces that have built the EU.
#7 by Jean-Baptiste Perrin on January 13th, 2010 - 10:41 am
Foreign ministers are not elected in any country in the world, Marcel. Like in any other democracy, her application for the job could (or not) be rejected by the elected European Parliament. If you are (like myself) annoyed by the lack of democracy in the EU, you should rather target your rage on the actual problems… That would maybe help being taken seriously.
#8 by Clarify on January 13th, 2010 - 7:23 pm
You might not be getting the point!!
Europe should put it’s “imperial and elities” past and anything associated with it in the history books.
We are instead imposing on the world and on our own fellow EU Citizens a face of Europe that seems to once again present an Elite of the Elite and historically compromised sectir of our society with voluminous pages of humar right abuses that came with our aristocratic former imperial system.
Now this has nothing to do with the person chosen per se who is likely to be a very nice individual by all means, but rather with the symboism attached to bot the title and the background attached.
Did any of you reflect on the fact that in Copenhagen everybody sitting around the table among the final decision makers were all representatives of former brutalized victims of a certain Europe of the Past???
Including Preident Obama whose Grandfather was brutalized by us (I mean our old European Power )
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23620970-will-obama-forgive-britain-for-his-grandfathers-torture.do
#9 by Clarify on January 13th, 2010 - 9:31 pm
You might not be getting the point!!
Europe should put it’s “imperial and elitie’s” past and anything associated with it in the history books.
We are instead imposing on the world and on our own fellow EU Citizens a face of Europe that seems to once again present an Elite of the Elite and historically compromised sector of our society with voluminous pages of human right abuses that came with our aristocratic former imperial system.
Now this has nothing to do with the person chosen per se who is likely to be a very nice individual by all means, but rather with the symbolism attached to both the title and the background.
Did any of you reflect on the fact that in Copenhagen everybody sitting around the table among the final decision makers were all representatives of former brutalized victims of a certain Europe of the Past???
Including President Obama whose Grandfather was brutalized by us (I mean our old European Power system).
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23620970-will-obama-forgive-britain-for-his-grandfathers-torture.do
#10 by Clarify on January 13th, 2010 - 11:38 pm
You are proving the point in the posting !!! representatives of a “certain Europe”.
#11 by BetterWorld Now on January 15th, 2010 - 10:46 am
Anyone know if she mentioned Cuba? There is a crying need for the EU to have its own policy on Cuba, not the brown-nosed glove puppet version of Washington’s fosselised policy we currently have.