Archive for September, 2010

Joschka Fischer is in town next week. The German ex-foreign minister,  famous for that Humboldt University speech, now advisor to the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline project and self-styled ‘rebel realist’ has always been worth listening to.

I interviewed him just over three years ago as part of a series of articles to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

Looking back over the article just now in light of next week’s visit (something to do with being an ‘eminent person’ attached to the Council of Europe), I find it makes for depressing reading as little has changed. Many of the statements could have been made yesterday.

Speaking from Princeton where he was lecturing at the time, he put his finger on much of the existential angst that is now commonplace in the EU.

Some of his comments at the time:

“Here in the United States, I hear ‘who is Europe, where is Europe?’ They are looking for China and for India. Europe is increasingly fading away beyond the horizon in the Atlantic.”

“This is a development which is definitely accelerating, so when you talk with the [US] political elite, the weaker Europe is, the less interest you will find.”

“Europe must defend its own strategic interests” – this last is almost amusing given the failed summit last week on that very topic.

Having long abandoned his more idealistic bent on the EU – he eventually distanced himself from the 2000 speech – he offered a more realistic assessment of what a Union, now with 27 member states, could aim for.

Under his scenario, member states would pool their sovereignty in “certain important points” while also “playing a dominant role in the framework of this European Union.”

This sounds about right for a Union that as internal market commissioner Michel Barnier put it the other day “is not a federal state and does not want to be one.”

But just where does it leave the EU? Neither here nor there it seems. Neither wanting to be one thing but also dimly aware that the individual nation state is not the answer either. Such worries were not so important when economic weight speaks for itself. But in the last 60 years the EU’s share of global GDP has decreased from 28 percent to 21 percent.

A certain realism is creeping into EU discourse of late. The EU remains proud of its values and its record for giving but is now more likely to talk about what it wants in return. Earlier this week, EU council president Herman Van Rompuy made overt reference to this.

EU council president Herman Van Rompuy has quite a big test before him on Thursday. He has called a summit to discuss foreign policy and strategic partnerships – topics upon which EU leaders like to express themselves in conflicting or at best hazy language.

The EU has nine strategic partners in total (Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, China, India and Japan.) But has put little thought into how to differentiate between them. That EU relations with the US are different to those with China is clear. The specifics of these differences are not.

And, as one diplomat dryly put it ahead of the meeting, the term strategic partnership was thought up a few years ago “without anyone ever really defining what it meant  and whether, indeed, the others regard us as their strategic partners.”

The language of the draft conclusions does not make for happy reading. It is pro-forma with occasional forays into the blindingly obvious:

Close and regular coordination between all the different institutional actors involved in the definition and implementation of the European Union’s external relations is necessary to ensure that EU representatives can defend coherent positions on the whole range of the strategic interests and objectives of the Union.

The problem, ironically given that part of the summit will be devoted to improving the effectiveness of such meetings, is that this European Council has not been well prepared. Tensions have been running high between EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s office and Van Rompuy’s people. Neither side “has got their act together to prepare this,” says one diplomat pointing to the fact that relations with China is to be major theme of the one-day gathering but there is no paper upon which to base discussions.

So the meeting risks highlighting what is perhaps better not gratuitously exposed – that the EU has no particular strategic thinking yet. Indeed the summit has fairly banal origins. German Chancellor Angela Merkel in December suggested there should be one meeting a year with foreign ministers, who, since the onset of the Lisbon Treaty, no longer attend EU leader summits.

“If a commitment had not been given a long time ago that we would be holding a summit in September, would we now be holding it? I don’t think so,” concludes a diplomat.

As it is, the Thursday’s gathering looks like being overshadowed by the on-going controversy over France’s policy towards the Roma.

For his part, Van Rompuy, sets out his characteristically low-key stall in a letter to EU leaders ahead of the summit.

“I do not of course expect a fully-fledged strategy to emerge from this one meeting. What I would much like us to do is set the right tone and method for the future.”

Van Rompuy has in the past let it be known that he is keen to have a weightier external policy role – and  representing the EU at leader level is part of his job description. To date, he has been most associated with talks on improving economic governance.

The former Belgian prime minister, who has won kudos in the past for his consensual style, will have had a good summit if he manages to draw some strategic conclusions from the meeting for the final press conference. What the individual leaders say in their own press conferences is another matter of course. As Ashton knows to her cost, the EU’s top figures are only as effective as the member states behind them.

Is Tuesday 14 September going to be remembered as the day the Barroso European Commission turned?

Viviane Reding, EU commissioner in charge of fundamental rights, has just made an extraordinarily strong attack on France for its Roma policy.

Using a type of language that is usually the preserve of NGOs or those not encumbered by public office, Reding’s comments are arguably the fiercest ever unleashed on a member state.

The short statement, given before the daily commission briefing, castigated France on several fronts – for singling out an ethnic minority, for lying to the commission and for calling into question Brussels’ role as guardian of the EU treaties.

The speech – which spoke of France’s “disgrace” and Reding being “appalled” – was all the more powerful for being against a large member state and for concerning the messy, complex issue of human rights, rather than the more straightforward internal market, that the commission usually likes to comment on.

It has been a long time coming. The commission maintained an eerie silence throughout most of August as the French authorities – shortly after president Sarkozy made a hardline speech linking crime and immigration – dismantled Roma camps and deported their inhabitants back to Romania and Bulgaria.

Brussels prevaricated even as the speed with which the deportations were carried out made it doubtful that the Roma were being dealt with on a case-by-case basis and in a proportionate manner as EU rules require.

In the meantime, French ministers came to Brussels to give assurances that Roma were not being targetted. The  commission continued to make half-threatening statements about what it might do, or allude to the issue as president Jose Manuel Barroso did in his State of the Union address last week.

But the commission was handed a smoking gun yesterday when it emerged that a memo circulated 5 August ordered the launch of ” a systematic operation to dismantle illegal camps, prioritising those of the Roma.” This was despite specific denials of such targetting by the French authorities.

“The role of the Commission as guardian of the Treaties is made extremely difficult if we can no longer have confidence in the assurances given by two ministers in a formal meeting with two Commissioners and with around 15 senior officials on the table from both sides.”

Well quite.

Paris added further insult to injury  when Europe minister Pierre Lellouche, outspoken as ever, yesterday said the French people were the guardian of the EU treaties.

Reding’s outburst does not change the legal consequences should Brussels take the court route as it says it might. France may ultimately be fined or ordered to change its national legislation.

But at least the commission has finally taken a stand, and filled the moral void that has been at the centre of the EU since this sorry – and dangerous – episode began.

Well you can give a speech a different name, but you can’t change the person giving it.

European Commission’s President Jose Manuel Barroso’s highly anticipated State of the Union speech before parliament this morning fell a little flat. Essentially because it was just more of the Barroso we know, but with none of the bells you would expect from an address billed as ‘state of the union.’

The 30-minute talk was jam-packed with initiatives and gestures. It contained all the usual Barrosities, a defensive optimism, a hinted-at (but likely never-to-be-realised) combativeness, a listing of the commission’s (to be) achievements, a hearty pragmatism, and something for all political groups. Well almost all.

As a work programme speech, it was fine. Good even. At least it showed that the commission is back. Or thinking about being back after months of being upstaged by member states and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

But as a state of the union speech, it failed. A good such speech articulates the fears of the people it is addressed to (presumably the EU citizens), looks back at where things went wrong and offers some hope for the future.

And, particularly in these times, it was humility rather than hubris that was called for.

There was no acknowledgment that that support for the EU has plunged. Only later, as part of a response, did Barroso admit to “problems, serious problems” in reference to the recent EU survey. The rise of intergovernmentalism was not mentioned, nor was the EU’s waning global stature.

France’s controversial Roma policy, questionable on several fronts, had only an indirect mention in the speech.

“(…) governments must respect human rights, including those of minorities. Racism and xenophobia have no place in Europe. On such sensitive issues, when a problem arises, we must all act with responsibility. I make a strong appeal not to reawaken the ghosts of Europe’s past.”

But mostly it was a state of the union that did not describe the state of the union.

Barroso, never big on introspection or retrospection, defended it by saying that he wanted to talk about the “state we want to bring the Union to” rather than looking back.

But it seems to me that blindly ploughing ahead without some regard for what is behind you is foolhardy. And gives the impression of either not wanting to see or not being able to see where the problems are.

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The remaining debate remained true to the form established in the monthly one-hour Q&A sessions between MEPs and Barroso.

The group leaders dominated. Joseph Daul leader of the centre-right – Barroso own political home – gave the lightest of grillings before concluding, bizarrely, “you need to come up with proposals.” One area of the speech that perhaps could not be faulted.

The socialist Martin Schulz that he “did not like” the state of the union address. Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberals, suggested that “today is the real start of your second term” and cherry-picked the part of the eurobarometer that deals with economic governance, an issue dear to the former Belgian PM’s heart. Some 86 percent of Europeans want more economic governance, he noted, conveniently glossing over the fact that no one actually really knows what that means.

“You are the absent president of a Europe that needs a president,” concluded Daniel Cohn-Bendit, from the Greens while, in a curious alignment of the plenary stars, Michal Kaminsky of the anti-federalist ECR admitted he found himself in agreement with Schulz. “You didn’t explain why the EU is the way it is.” For eurosceptic Nigel Farage it was all a “bit of dog’s dinner” what with the EU being “loathed” and Van Rompuy and Barroso hanging around at the top.

But perhaps nobody felt up to having a stellar debate. It is possible that the fact that parliament’s authorities briefly thought it necessary to fine MEPs for not attending this morning’s speech was comment enough on the State of the Union.

A ‘State of the Union’ address is coming our way. The first ever for the EU. It will be given by European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso next Tuesday morning. Although, given the times we’re in, with everybody and nobody seeming to speak for the Union, others could have laid claim to making such a speech (EU council president Herman Van Rompuy, a member state leader facing domestic elections, even Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank President.) But Barroso got there first.

The address, given its name and the EU’s pretensions to be a heavyweight international player, attracts comparisons with the annual speech by US presidents at the beginning of each year. President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address had about 48 million TV viewers in the US and millions more globally. This reflects two things. First that a lot of what the US does affects the rest of the world. And, second, that US citizens and much of the rest of the world have a strong emotional engagement with the US and its president – be it positive or negative.

While the first is also true of the EU in certain areas, such as trade. The second is not.

Most EU citizens, let alone those from further afield, would be hard put to name the president of the commission or say what his job entails.

But as he has billed it as big, then the speech should be big. The recent summer weeks have not shown the commission in its best light. First there was the tit-for-tat exchange of letters between Barroso and French president Nicolas Sarkozy over the EU’s actions to help flood-devastated Pakistan.

And now we are subject to a pass-the-hot-potato spectacle as the commission and France firmly lay the ‘Roma problem’ before each other’s door. The initial deafening silence in Brussels in the face of France’s expulsions of hundreds of Roma and evacuation of their camps is now being followed up with a quiet check to see if Paris really is obeying the letter of the EU law.

Even before the summer, the commission has appeared hamstrung, struggling to steer the debate on how to tighten up rules on economic governance to prevent another ‘Greece’.

On top of it all comes a survey showing that support for the EU is at a record low in several countries. Brussels’ default mode is to say that member states are to blame for this by taking the credit for the positive and making the commission a scapegoat for the bad. Barroso repeated the complaint in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera published this morning.

The scapegoating charge is true but endlessly repeating it is not, past practice shows, going to alter member states’ behaviour. Neither will it cause a surge in EU popularity.

What does this have to do with Barroso’s forthcoming speech? Well now would be time for an honest assessment of where the EU is at. (A befuddled kind of nowhere seems to be the actual State of the Union) A little humility on the part of the commission president admitting where he could have done more and a few ambitious and clear plans for future would be a good start.