Archive for February, 2010

A small follow-up to the previous post. It was all down to Kiev’s invitation list, it seems. Ukraine invited EU council president Herman Van Rompuy, EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and EP chief Jerzy Buzek to attend this week’s inauguration ceremony of Viktor Yanukovych.

Barroso did not take up the offer. Nor did Van Rompuy. “It’s not usual that by such an inauguration that countries or institutions are present at the level of prime minister, minister or president,” said a spokesperson.

In light of these pending no-shows, Ashton, who had planned to attend the informal defence ministers meeting, then cancelled to go to Kiev. Her people argue that not to have gone would have sent a poor signal to a country whose Russia-friendly president had just taken the fairly surprising decision to make Brussels rather than Moscow the destination for the symbolic first trip abroad.

Well, even if Ashton riled defence ministers to the extent some felt the need to twitter about it (frankly, he doesn’t come out of this too well either), Ukraine officials are pleased. One high-level contact told me that Kiev was “honoured” and “very much appreciated” Ashton’s attendance. It was a“clear-cut” signal from the EU and a “very good beefing-up of the decision by Yanukovych to go to Brussels first.” Yanukovich will be in Brussels on Monday.

So there we go. Relations with an important neighbour were favoured over taking part in the first informal chat with defence ministers under the new Lisbon Treaty. I suspect that had she decided against the Ukraine inauguration she would have come in for criticism too. As it was, I don’t think she missed any giant leaps forward in EU defence integration.

Well this is the EU at its finest, isn’t it? It talked the new Lisbon Treaty up a storm before it came into place. Taking a frankly rose-tinted view of what the new posts it contains will mean for foreign policy and external representation: allowing it to speak with one voice and giving the EU a coherent presence on the world stage. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that while the tools may be there, you still need politically-willed hands to make good use of them.

And what was member states’ first act of blessing for the new treaty? Choosing a foreign policy chief – Catherine Ashton – with no foreign policy experience and on the basis of a set of laughably arbitrary criteria (politics, gender and geography).

The second act of blessing has been an incessant sniping since she took over the job. Amid ‘great’ surprise that the novice to the world of diplomacy has not hit the ground running. She not only needs to master the various policy briefs, she also needs to do a job that three people did before her (the High Represenative, the external relations commissioner, and the foreign minister of the rotating presidency country) and set up a new diplomatic  service.

With a foot in both the commission (where she is vice-president) and in the council (representing member states), she is exposed to internal rivalries and turf wars of both camps.

It all started as off largely Gallic-tinged and as a whisper. Now the criticism is deafening. And following her absence at the informal defence ministers meeting in Spain, it has big names behind it.

Here is the French defence minister, Herve Morin.
“Isn’t it rich that this morning, to display the ties between Nato and the EU, we have the Nato secretary general (Anders Fogh Rasmussen) here but not the high representative for the first meeting since the Lisbon treaty came into effect.” His Dutch colleague twittered on her “notable” absence while Spain’s Carme Chacon “regretted” it.

Sure Ashton has made mistakes. Although her decision – much criticised – not to fly to Haiti after the earthquake was correct (it would have been an unnecessary photo opportunity in a time of great misery), some of her subsequent actions have been questionable.

She seemed to have allowed commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to call the shots when it came to the appointment of the EU ambassador in Washington while not going to the defence ministers meeting in favour of a trip to the Ukraine president’s inauguration gives the impression of a lack of interest in what ought to be a key part of her dossier. Her detractors note that Javier Solana, her predecessor, made all the meetings.

But the open criticism is self-indulgent and unhelpful. It serves neither the EU nor Catherine Ashton who, lest member states forget, is supposed to be the EU foreign policy chief until 2014.

Having said that, the only person who can stop it is Ashton herself. The criticism has now reached a self-fulfilling momentum. She needs to stand up to her detractors and say: “Enough is enough.”

Jose Manuel Barroso may have over-reached himself this time. Publicly he is fond of saying that the Lisbon Treaty creates no winners among its EU institutions and that each of them emerges stronger from the new set –up and equally so.

Behind the scenes, however, he has been working to make sure that he does emerge a winner from the new legal set-up, now in place for almost three months. The prize is exposure, influence and a prominent place at the table in international gatherings.

Because although the Lisbon Treaty says the commission represents the EU in all external matters except CFSP – something Barroso is at pains to underline – there are now two other permanent actors in the picture. Catherine Ashton as EU foreign policy chief and Herman Van Rompuy as president of the European Council.

Fond of the limelight, Barroso started his chess moves early. In June last year, he appointed Joao Vale de Almeida, his right hand man, to head up the external relations units in the commission. The obvious aim was to have a trusted aide dealing with foreign policy questions.

Since then, it has been to Barroso’s luck that two low-key actors are now foreign policy chief and EU president, both compromise figures and both chosen, particularly Ashton, following a checklist of criteria (geography, gender, political affiliation).

The foreign policy chief, who has a foot in both the commission and the council, being vice-president of the first and supposed to represent the foreign policy wishes of the latter, could have been a real challenge to Barroso. A powerful figure could have relegated him to the sidelines, outshone him in his own house.

But in Ashton, new to the world of diplomacy and still finding her feet in the huge new job, Barroso has fallen on his feet. This appears to have emboldened him to make the surprise move to send his man – Joao Vale de Almeida – to head the EU delegation in Washington. This remarkable for two reasons – member states seem to have been caught unawares and de Almeida is a civil servant, not a politician. John Bruton, former Irish prime minister, held the post last. It simply looks like a ploy by Barroso to get a trusty set of eyes and ears in Washington.

Now Sweden has complained. Foreign minister Carl Bildt, a heavy-weight politician whose name was also briefly mentioned as a possible contender for Ashton’s post, has asked for clarification on how the appointment was made. Barroso’s people say he was entitled to make the move because the EU’s new architecture – the diplomatic service – is not yet in place. Still it looks rather like Ashton has been out-manoeuvered.

It was the ‘Kiss&Ride’ that did it. The vacuous English-language sign that broke the camel’s back. Clearly, it means a short term carpark. But who could have known that the locals (in Bavaria) would think it has seedier connotations? A flurry of letters to the local politician ensued.

A brief wander through a German train station will see you directed to “Service points” (help desks) and “Counters” (ticket desks) after which you could “call a bike” or opt for “car-sharing” but perhaps not before having called some “hotlines” or being handed some “fliers.” Fine (just about) if you speak English but too much for those who do not.

Now Germany’s railway company (Deutsche Bahn) is taking a stand against the plethora of English-language signs in its stations that confuse and irritate ordinary Germans. The policy is to be dropped. Much to joy of the German Language Association whose website dolefully notes that there are over 7000 English words in the German lexicon

Many of these must surely be in business German which is littered with Anglicisms either adopted as is or partially Germanified. Something can be ‘gemanaged’ or ‘upgedated’, for instance, while you are in ‘einem Meeting’ or take ‘ein Conference call.’ Ordinary German too is full of English words such as ‘second hand’ or ‘outfit’ or the ubiquitous ‘cool.’

So is a German language academy in the offing? An institute that like its French counterpart would defend the home language against the English creep? Probably not, Berlin has stayed out of it so far.

But it is interesting (and good obviously) that Germans are taking more public pride in their language. When the country held the EU presidency in 2007, it made it a policy to speak German (and not English) wherever possible. An offshoot of the generally more political and mentally confident nation perhaps. (This is a country where to speak of being proud of being German, or display the national flag was until very recently considered a taboo.)

The language issue has become more politicized now. German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle made headlines last year when he refused to answer a question in English at a press conference shortly after he took up the post.

Meanwhile, transport minister Peter Raumsauer has banned unnecessary English words such as “taskforce”, “Knowhow” and “Travel Management” from his ministry.

Still whatever about giving priority to German in train stations and being more assertive generally about the language, Germans are merciless with their political representatives who they feel should speak English well. Germany’s EU commissioner Guenter Oettinger, who speaks both heavily accented German and English, has been subjected to a ladleful of scorn in the media.

The European Parliament is a funny old place. Armed with ever increasing legislative powers, as MEPs giddy with the as-yet unexplored possibilities of the Lisbon Treaty tell us with admirable regularity, it is nevertheless a legislature without a single demos, elected on a low average voter turnout and where a stifling sense of consensus reigns.

This leads to odd politics. The traditional power-sharing stitch up between the main right and left parties on the presidency of their institution being a case in point. The grand coalition of right, left and liberal MEPs that lies behind most decisions is another. The absence of a sense of real political effect for your vote is a third.

The three main parties argue that their coalition politics makes them stronger when it comes to positioning the parliament as whole during legislative negotiations with member states. The flipside is that they remove the ‘politics’ from the EU’s only directly elected institution and make it a rather snooze-inducing complexity for ordinary citizens for whom the traditional for and against / left and right is removed or at the very least obscured.

Consider this: the right dominated in the June European elections. There was much speculation at the time about whether the right – would then dominate policy-making. Between them the EPP (265 members), the liberals (84) and European Conservatives and Reformists (54) have the majority in the 736-member parliament. If you throw in the eurosceptic Freedom and Democracy group, which has something of the untouchable about them as far as most other MEPs are concerned (at least publicly), then it is clearly a right-wing parliament.

But a recent report on the voting behaviour of the first six months of the European Parliament by the excellent VoteWatch.EU, shows this is not (yet) the case. The EPP has lost a higher percentage of votes between July and December 2009 than in the last legislature.

The main beneficiary has been the Liberal group (the third sized grouping behind the Socialists) which thoroughly enjoys its king-maker status in the EU assembly. It has seen an increased percentage of ‘win’ votes.

It is, of course, the very early days of this current legislature. The centre-right dominates in the parliament, the commission and the council. At some point this will start to be felt.

But still probably only to a certain extent because of the nature of checks and balances in the parliament, and the I’ll scratch your back nature of EP politics. According to Professor Simon Hix, a political scientist from the London School of Economics, the only way to ensure some change  would be to alter the way of allocating committee chairs and rapporteurships, highly influential posts in the parliament. Currently distributed proportionally, he suggests allocating more such posts to the political group that won the most votes in the election. An interesting idea.

Additionally, he and and his colleague Sara Hagemann – both are behind the VoteWatch project – note the continued cohesiveness within the political groupings, even if the ideological net has been cast pretty widely. (The centre-right EPP group contains the free-trade oriented Nordics and the more protectionist French while the Liberal group regularly weeps into its cups over the socially conservative views of its Irish members.)

These differences notwithstanding, this general trend towards group cohesiveness – in evidence since the mid 1980s – appears to be growing as the parliament’s strength increase. And is likely to further grow as MEPs seek to influence legislation in new areas of power such as farm policy or JHA, say the LSE academics.

(Incidentally, they are planning a VoteWatch for the council of ministers. Shining light into this particular corner is proving to be quite a challenge. It will take another year, they reckon.)

My my, change may be afoot.

When Herman Van Rompuy became president of the European Council, his first act was to call an informal meeting of EU leaders. His second act may be to call many more.

Nothing is written in stone yet. It never is after these informal gatherings but Van Rompuy says he intends to propose that the 27 leaders meet once a month.

Following Thursday’s meeting he said there were so many topics that leaders wanted to talk about that he “drew the conclusion” they should meet more often.

This he noted, in what he is becoming his trademark self-deprecatory manner, would have the added benefit of meaning “there will be fewer complaints of my invisibility.”

This would be a very interesting development indeed.

At the moment, EU leaders meet four times a year formally. And every now and then for an extraordinary (informal) summit, such as the one that took place today, originally to discuss the Union’s longterm economic strategy, before Greek ‘events’ took over.

Regular gathering would have the simple effect of EU leaders getting to know each other better. The ceremony and sense of ‘occasion’ that normally surrounds these meetings would necessarily fall away as habit and regularity took over.

Potential lapses into protectionism, a political or economic problem, small bubbles of resentment – any such incidences in a particular EU corner would then only be one month away from being discussed at the highest political level.

The regular gatherings would have the potential to politicise Europe to a far greater degree. The pressure to have a result, if only a commitment to a future result, would likely lead to decisions being made more quickly. This could have important implications for the drive to further economic coordination.

According to Van Rompuy, the sour taste left by the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, where the EU did not feature in negotiations on the final deal, has focussed the minds. Economic power translates into global political power. Yes, it’s obvious. But sometimes such points need to be driven home.

For the European Commission the extra meetings would also be an interesting development.

For this meeting, the question of the EU’s future economic strategy was the subject of careful political choreography. The commission president is to oversee the content(fewer more differentiated goals); the EU president the governance of it (carrots are in, talk of sticks is out).

Future such meetings could change the political dynamics. On the one hand, commission president Jose Manuel Barroso could use the occasions to float legislative ideas and take soundings. On the other hand, it could be used by member states to sideline the commission further.

All of the above, of course, is based on the assumption that Van Rompuy drew the right conclusion today.

When Herman Van Rompuy in December said he intended to call an extraordinary summit in February to discuss the economic crisis, it seemed a perfectly adequate, and not particularly controversial, first step for the newly elected president of the European Council.

The EU is rather good at summitry after all. Matters are discussed and/or argued to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes there are breakthrough agreements. More often there are fudges.

Then everybody goes home again. They leave in their wake, wordy conclusions (if it is a formal summit), a promise of future wordy conclusions (if it is as informal gathering) and somewhat disparate accounts of the meeting itself.

Until now this was more or less sufficient. Thursday’s summit, informal though it is, needs to be different.

EU leaders last gathered together in December. Since then, the Union has suffered two public humiliations. The first during the climate change meeting in Copenhagen where it was sidelined in negotiations on an issue where it considers itself a global leader.

Then US president Barack Obama indicated it wasn’t worth turning up to this Spring’s regular bilateral summit with the EU. That hurt. But not as much as the suspicion that he might have a point.

Those reminders that a union of 27 disagreeing member states is not considered a world force by other powers form the backdrop to this meeting.

So this summit needs to show the EU at its more coherent best. This would, at the very least be morale boosting, as well as sending an important wider political signal of general purposefulness. Something that has been missing for quite some time.

Which brings us to the Greece. Speculation has been mounting over recent weeks about whether other eurozone members will come to the rescue of the debt-ridden country. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times today report German officials as saying help for Greek is being considered. ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet is attending the summit.

Given the build-up, a clear message on Greece needs to emerge from the meeting. This would calm jittery markets and send the signal that the EU is dealing its biggest ever test to its 16-member eurozone.

A second clear message is needed on the EU’s new ten-year economic strategy – originally the main reason for calling the summit. The last strategy was a glaring failure. This meeting is about sounding out opinions on how to make the next plan more concise and make member states stick to its goals – a contentious point to date. At the very least, a first agreement over policy objectives should be evident after the discussion.

The meeting is also a high stakes one for Van Rompuy personally. It is his first EU show. The former Belgian PM is regularly said to be a keen behind-the-scenes negotiator -  the main reason for his being picked to be EU president in the first place. The particular political and economic currents of today have turned the summit into a bruising first test of his talents at forging consensus.

He raised expectations further by being virtually invisible since taking up the job and by changing the summit venue. Instead of the usual meeting place (the dreary council building), EU leaders will meet in an old library nearby. This informal setting (with only one advisor allowed in a near-by room) is supposed to make leaders really talk to one another. And produce some ideas. Will they rise to the occasion?

However member states would sell a failed summit – probably by playing it down as an informal meeting – it would be shackled to Van Rompuy for the foreseeable future. Among those keenly watching from the sidelines to see if he will make a go of it is European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, fighting to keep himself and his institution relevant.

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.)