Via Twitter I came across this post in French by Michael Malherbe about a letter sent from Commissioner responsible for Communications, Viviane Reding, to Commission President Barroso. Euractiv managed to get hold of a copy of the letter that contains 14 points about how communications are to be improved. The irony is that it looks like a scan of a letter sent on paper to Barroso. So much for modern internal comms in the Commission!
But what’s actually in the 14 points?
Bit of genius from Danny the Red Green:
Dany Cohn-Bendit-Investiture de la Commission Barroso II
envoyé par EurodeputesEE. – Regardez les dernières vidéos d’actu.
I try to see the positives where I can, but I am really struggling this evening. Who actually wanted Barroso, Van Rompuy and Ashton to be running the European Union? It all strikes me as the lowest common denominator of the worst sort. As @kosmopolit pointed out on Twitter, the three of them – together with EP President Buzek – tick all the boxes: north-south, male-female, left right etc. The problem is the boxes they don’t tick! Leadership, inspiration, relevant experience.
If everyone had played things differently we could have had a team that would have ticked all the boxes – including leadership, inspiration, relevant experience… Pascal Lamy as President of the Commission, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga as President of the European Council, and David Miliband as High Representative.
But it was not to be. We have a vacuous lump of lard as Commission President, an unknown Belgian opposed to Turkish membership of the EU as President of the European Council, and Baroness Ashton as High Rep, competent but rather uninspiring.
I am really not impressed.
Photo credits, Creative Commons Licenses: Miliband | Freiberga | Lamy | Barroso | Van Rompuy | Ashton
Baroness Ashton - CC / Flickr
Rumours are reaching me via Twitter that Baroness Ashton, UK Labour politician and outgoing Commissioner for Trade is the individual the socialists are now backing to be the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy. I must say I am astounded.
Let me at least set the record straight about what I think about Ashton. I was not immensely positive about her appointment to the Commission just over a year ago (I even questioned the legality of the appointment), but since then I think she has been OK. I happened to hear her speak a few weeks ago in Brussels and was genuinely impressed by her approach. She was coherent, thoughtful and genuinely decent.
I’m also very happy that one of the top jobs is going to a woman.
But really, how will a top team of Barroso, Ashton and Van Rompuy look? None of them are remotely inspirational… Surely Barroso – Freiberga – Miliband or something like that would have been a better bet? The Belgian press are even confirming the news now. I was hopeful for something better than Barroso – Solana, but I am really not sure we have achieved that.
François Fillon - CC / Flickr
There’s an interesting article in Le Monde today speculating once more about a role for François Fillon as a possible candidate for the Presidency of the Commission. The story goes broadly like this:
Sarkozy and others hence have the ideal line to take. There are leaders on the right that are not especially keen on Barroso but have been bound into a pact to back him. If the European Parliament can then do the dirty work to not approve the Portuguese then everyone wins.
The problem of course is that such an approach would change the institutional balance. In the future the European Parliament could theoretically be brave enough to keep rejecting the nominee for President until it got the candidate it wanted. Strengthening the EP in this way would be a rather unusual (and in my mind positive) by-product of centre right leaders not being ready to entirely back Barroso.
What about the left though? Surely Zapatero, Socrates and Brown want Barroso because he is weak. Fillon is from the right and would also be stronger… How would the ‘leftist’ Prime Ministers react?
Anyway, all of this is probably just lazy speculation. The EP will probably show about as much backbone as it has in recent times (i.e. none) and just go ahead and approve Barroso.
[UPDATE]
The Economist has more on this – written much more eloquently.
The EP elections, the five year democratic interruption to the Brussels game, are long in the past. Everyone is back from their summer holidays, ready for a bout of jousting and positioning in that depressing and opaque game: how to put together a team of 27 Commissioners.
Barroso - CC / Flickr
The nomination of José Manuel Barroso as President of the Commission looks to be a dead cert. The Heads of State and Government have already nominated him but the EP is waiting to give their approval until the Irish have made up their mind on the Treaty of Lisbon.
The Socialists and the Greens in the EP say the Commission needs strong leadership yet they lack anyone that could provide it. This has not stopped Barroso getting a bit nervous however, and it seems he has hit upon the idea of putting in a high profile socialist as Vice President of the Commission. Barroso doesn’t want a socialist like Margot Wallström who might actually stand for something; he instead wants Alfred Gusenbauer, ex Chancellor of Austria, a man who never acquitted himself at European level. He’s best known in Brussels for once calling Barroso “Barolo”.
Werner Faymann - CC / Flickr
Problem is that the Austrian government, a grand coalition headed up by current social democrat Chancellor Werner Faymann, doesn’t want a social democrat in the Commission at all. The government in Vienna has made it clear it wants a member of the ÖVP, the conservative junior coalition partners – probably Wolfgang Molterer or Ursula Plassnik – to get the position in Brussels instead. The game being played out is reported in more depth in English here and here, and all the candidates are explained in German here.
I can’t make up my mind what’s more stupid here. Surely a social democrat Prime Minister should put forward a social democrat Commissioner, rather than rewarding the ÖVP? I suspect however it’s realpolitik from Faymann, sending an opponent like Molterer away to Brussels for 5 years. Gusenbauer is probably no threat to Faymann, and hence does not need to be rewarded. With games like this being played by its politicians, and the role of the Kronenzeitung, is it any surprise that Austria is one of the most eurosceptic countries in Europe?
Alfred Gusenbauer - CC / Flickr
But what is Barroso playing at? Surely he should properly have sounded out Vienna before the name of Gusenbauer was raised in public (although Barroso’s spokesman Laitenberger has denied Gusenbauer is in the running). But then, as Julien Frisch points out, we should have no more hope that Barroso is going to be any better in a second term than he was in his first.
On another issue regarding the Commission – what its plans are for the next 5 years – I was asked by a friend in the UK Labour Party if it was not strange that Michal Kaminski, leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) containing the UK Tories, has said things like “Much of the agenda presented by Barroso, such as his focus on completing the single market, is welcome” (more here). Just think about that for a moment. It’s actually not at all illogical for Kaminski to be backing Barroso because the Portuguese is vacuous and weak, just the way parties of the right would want it.
What is completely wrong and unacceptable is that politicians of the left – Faymann, Zapatero, Socrates, Brown – are all so willing to defend a right wing agenda for the Commission. You can bet that when the left gets crushed again at the 2014 EP elections there will be a further bout of soul searching but the left is making the errors now, every day, at European level, and will deserve whatever kicking it gets in the future due to a complete and utter lack of leadership or ideology. It’s hopeless.
(Cross-posted to Social Europe)
EU David and Goliath
OK, here we go again. Open Europe having a further whine at something going on in Brussels, this time the amount of money the European Union spends on ‘propaganda’. Also not a surprise is the choice of EUObserver to carry a column from Open Europe’s Lorraine Mullally, and in Sweden Timbro is apparently trying to get the Swedish Presidency to address the ‘issue’. The gist of the message is summed up with these lines from Mullally:
With so much public money at their disposal, the EU institutions are able to propel their own vision of the future of Europe, and also begin to create a monopoly over what should be regarded as the “facts.” The institutions claim to want a wider debate on Europe, but by trying to suppress those who do not support their vision, they are stifling debate.
But is there actually any issue to deal with here? The money to which Mullally refers is a supposed sum of €2.4 billion (or about 2% of the EU budget) that is allocated to communications projects. Fair amounts of money for sure, but dwarfed by the budgets of national public sector broadcasters, a point made in reply by Richard Walker, who is also keen to point out that many of the projects are editorially independent of the EU institutions.
There are of course some legitimate complaints – some of the EU publicity materials are really over the top, and some plans are ill conceived. But is all of this any worse than the comms work of a national government? I think not.
Last but not least the EU does not have at its disposal one of the best means of political communication – elections. European Parliament elections are still essentially second order national elections – if a politician gets selected high up on a national party’s list then selection is almost certain. Essentially politicians communicate what they do when it’s in their interests to do so, essentially to secure re-election. To make such a system at European level would require more power to the parliament and, one might dare say, a federal Europe. It’s much, much harder to get any agreement on that than it is to get some politicians to part with €2.4 billion for some communications projects.
Until then Open Europe’s David can take on Wallström’s Goliath but the stones are rather misdirected.
Boxing Gloves - CC / Flickr
As an alumnus of the College of Europe in Bruges I periodically get e-mails on the student e-mail lists. This one has recently reached me:
Dear Alumni,
Following the recent elections for the European Parliament, the nomination of the Commission’s President is now on the European Agenda.
The European Movement (www.europeanmovement.eu) has launched a petition supporting the re-appointment of the President José Manuel Barroso. In this important historical movement, we invite you to visit the petition’s website and to sign it: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/manifesto27
Whatever your feelings are, you are also invited to participate in the debate promoted by the European Movement through the blog www.barroso2.blogspot.com
Best regards,
Fausto Matos
Ana Perdigao
Joao Ribeiro
The problem is that the e-mail is completely false. The European Movement has no view for or against Barroso. I happen to be the webmanager of European Movement and they are not associated with either of those sites. Indeed the blog looks bland and amateurish.
This follows on from the hacking attacks against Anyone But Barroso from Portuguese IP addresses.
So what is the Barroso team up to? Or are supporters of his taking matters into their own hands? Or are people queuing up for jobs in his cabinet or something?
You can alternatively give your opinion on Barroso at eu2009.cz – currently running at 76% against Barroso.
