So then, who are the possible replacements?

I write this on the basis of no inside information whatsoever. I have just tried to compile a list on the basis of the names and characters who would be eligible. These would have to be former prime ministers, high ranking ministers or Commissioners. Feel free to add more suggestions or comments!

Alfred Gusenbauer (Former Chancellor of Austria)

Since being replace as Chancellor in Vienna, Gusenbauer has been a regular visitor to Brussels, often popping up at events run by FEPS and the Renner Institut. He’s well known in the Brussels circles, although lacks any star quality. He would be a safe but uninspiring option.
Chances: good

Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Former German Foreign Minister)

A big beast without a role since the end of the grand coalition in Germany in 2009, Steinmeier’s political future has been an open question. He would bring gravitas to the role, but does he still harbour a further shot at Germany’s top job in 2013?
Chances: unknown. Would he want it?

Mona Sahlin (Former leader of the Swedish Social Democrats, former government minister in Sweden)

It didn’t work out for Sahlin as leader of the Social Democrats, but she has respect within her party and the Swedish Social Democrats are well connected and trusted within the PES. The PES also has never had a female President.
Chances: medium

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Outgoing Spanish Prime Minister)

He probably retains more respect at EU level than nationally within Spain. The most recent Social Democratic Prime Minister of a large EU country. However he backed Barroso for Commission President in 2009 – has everyone forgotten that?
Chances: low. Probably too soon for him.

David Miliband (Former Foreign Secretary in the UK)

Whenever there’s a top EU job available, David Miliband’s name always crops up. Probably the only Brit with the skills, respect and experience to take the job. But would he want it? What are his plans? No-one really seems to know except the man himself.
Chances: if he wants it then the job could well be his

Other possible names: Anna Diamantopoulou, Josep Borrell, José Sócrates?

(All images CC License from Wikipedia: Gusenbauer | Steinmeier | Sahlin | Zapatero | Miliband)

While Martin Schulz and the Socialist Group in the EP have not been asking himself this sort of question, it has not stopped some enterprising PES activists, led by Desmond O’Toole in Dublin, from raising the issue of a PES Primary. You can also join the Facebook Group here.

So what’s the basic idea?

Essentially the PES should select a candidate for President of the European Commission, and the members of the PES parties – in a one member, one vote postal ballot – would get to decide who that person should be. If the PES parties then were the largest group in the European Parliament after the 2014 elections that individual would be nominate to be Commission President. Simple, straightforward, accountable… and if the PES did it then other parties would surely follow? Also within the PES it would eliminate the dithering and horse trading we’ve seen in the past when it comes to whether to nominate a candidate for Commission President or not.

The chances the member parties of the PES are going to back this are slim to none, and the costs of the ballot would surely be considerable, but it’s vital that this issue is debated and discussed and – with luck – eventually it will happen.

Red Brick Wall - CC / Flickr

The European Parliament Election results on Sunday were not good for social democratic and labour parties across Europe, polling 3% less than at the elections in 2004. PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, posting at Labourlist, states rather blandly that “We need more PES, not less PES” so as to do better next time. I’m afraid it’s not that simple Poul – so here are a few more ideas.

First of all, social democratic parties at national and EU level lack coherent and decent quality leadership. Brown is monumentally weak and cares little about the EU, Aubry has not been able to assert herself in France, the Italian Partito Democratico is tearing itself apart, the SPD seems determined to simply turn the clock back, the left has no coherent leadership in Poland… only Zapatero has been able to arrest the decline, and he has seldom been seen on the international stage. Things are not much better at EU level – I have respect for Rasmussen, but he has been unable to assert himself. Leader of the Socialist Group Martin Schulz, famous in large part thanks to his Berlusconi incident, does not have the optimism, nuance or communications skills to lead effectively. In short things at the top must change.

Secondly, the left does not have an adequate discourse to appeal to voters. Stuck between the unionised labour wing of the past and potential socially responsible yet more individualised approach of today, the left is in danger of losing votes to the old left (to Die Linke in Germany for example) and to the Greens that polled well across the old Member States in the EP elections. Here the left must be continually and resolutely determined in developing EU-wide principles for flexicurity – not propping up outdated and polluting industries just because they employ lots of people. It is also important that the EU can develop cooperative means to approach labour market relations – Nordic-style collective agreements with collaborative rather than destructive trade unions are a much better model than central European rules-based systems. Just because the EU is a community of law does not mean EU-wide rules are necessarily the right answer.

Thirdly, the left needs to work out in what areas it wants the European Union to act. Regulation of the banking sector is all very well, but what are centre-left principles for CAP, consumer protection, trans-European networks, structural funds? Surely during an economic downturn a resolute effort to ensure Europe does the best it can for its poorest people and poorest regions should be a policy priority for the PES – a more redistributive EU budget. Poorer voters voted against the European Constitution and Treaty of Lisbon as eloquently argued by Kevin H. O’Rourke – the results of the EP elections seem to show these voters tended to stay at home rather than vote for the left. Focus of the budget should also be more on foreign aid and investments in green industries. Beyond that Europe’s education systems are clearly not adequate in the era of globalisation – the left should more strongly advocate giving the Bologna Process some teeth.

If you’ve reached the end of this post and are thinking: what planet is Jon living on to think that all of this is possible, then just think back a little to 1999 and The Third Way / die neue Mitte – an era of Blair, Schröder, even Jospin, when the left managed to have a positive and forward looking message in so many European countries. That’s the standard to which we should aspire by 2014.

Anna Diamantopoulou - CC / Flickr

OK, I am putting 2+2 together and making 10, but if I get this one right then you heard it here first!

Andy Carling, a regular commenter on this blog, stated that he had heard Poul Nyrup Rasmussen say at a press conference that the PES does have a candidate for President of the Commission, but Rasmussen would not name that person.

At the same time my attention has been drawn to an interview to Sveriges Radio (här på svenska) given by social democrat Vice President of the European Commission Margot Wallström where she states that she would like to see former Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Anna Diamantopoulou as successor to Barroso. This is followed up in Swedish by AiP and Byggnads (one of Sweden’s largest trade unions), and in English by the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers.

So is the PES lining up Diamantopoulou? And if so, is this a good idea?

Frankly I know very little about Diamantopoulou, other than that she’s a socialist and served in Romano Prodi’s Commission between 1999 and 2004. I hence have no clue whether she is adequately good to be a viable candidate. If you reckon she is or is not any good please do let me know in the comments.

But more important than that: could she ever even be nominated? Firstly there’s a sort of consensus that the Commission President should come from the largest party in the European Parliament after the elections. So the first hurdle to overcome would be for the PES to win the elections.

Secondly, while polls look OK for Diamantopoulou’s party – PASOK – the Greek government is still centre right, with a tiny majority in parliament. Would Karamanlis ever consider nominating someone from an alternative political family? Highly unlikely was the opinion of an expert in Greek politics that I asked for an opinion on the matter. The same could be said for other possible centre left nominees – Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and Margot Wallström* herself – would the centre-right governments in their respective countries of origin actually nominate them? I think that danger would be less for my preferred socialist – Pascal Lamy – as Sarkozy previously backed socialist Strauss Kahn as Managing Director of the IMF.

I suspect that if it came to it the EP could bulldozer through its candidate, but the short term danger is surely in terms of PR. If Karamanlis is clever and Diamantopoulou’s name is raised by the PES he would surely state that he would not even nominate her to be the Greek member of the European Commission – would that not kill her candidacy dead and make the PES look a bit ridiculous?

Looking at it the other way, the chance that the PES even nominates someone would make the election much more interesting. It would give the socialists a figurehead, someone to rally around, and help put across some clear and determined vision for the future policies of the European Commission. Diamantopoulou’s nomination poses some complications and I would personally prefer Lamy, but if the PES do go for Diamantopoulou (or indeed for anyone half reasonable) that will be a good step forward for EU-wide democracy and will help make the EP elections a bit more interesting.

* – Wallström has continually ruled out wanthing to be Commission President

Essentially there is a disagreement between the Party of European Socialists, headed up by party president Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, and 3 of the PES member parties. Those 3 parties, and their party leaders, namely Socrates in Portugal, Zapatero in Spain and Brown in the UK, are quite happy with Barroso being re-nominated as President of the Commission as this re-nomination suits their own petty national interests, and also – especially for the UK – the fact that Barroso is weak also helps his cause.

In the opposite camp are MEPs in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, and leaders of some of Europe’s social democrat parties that are out of power nationally. For them they need a strong message for the election campaigns on why a social europe is possible and desirable, and accomplishing that with Barroso in place is not going to be easy. So hence we have Rasmussen in an interview in Le Monde stating “Si une autre majorité se dégage, M. Barroso ne pourra pas être reconduit“, and he also stated in Financial Times Deutschland “Wir wollen nach der Europaparlamentswahl zusammen mit anderen Parteien einen anderen Kommissionspräsidenten wählen“.

So essentially if you vote for a PES member party at the EP elections in June you’ll get MEPs that will not back Barroso (good) but do not know who they will back (bad) and say they will have to cooperate with other parties on that (confusing).

So why not put up a candidate anyway? Well, Rasmussen might want to be that person, but with his namesake now NATO General Secretary, and also with Denmark outside Schengen and the Euro is he appropriate? His left wing rival in Brussels, Martin Schulz, is a tub-thumping bully, not someone with the nous or ability to bring people together. The best social democrat – Pascal Lamy – hence seldom even features in the debate about the nomination of a candidate.

Then Europe’s politicians wonder why the population does not understand what’s going on in Brussels, and how the process of European ‘democracy’ seems opaque and confusing. I rest my case.

UK Class 66, DB Schenker - CC / Flickr

The PES was kind enough to e-mail me a copy of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen’s open letter to the European Liberals (whose campaign launched today) where Rasmussen calls into question the Liberals’ statement that “The single market should be reinforced and extended in energy, postal services, railways and health care”. The full letter is available at the LME-LSE website here.

The letter goes on: “Our question is: how do you propose to use the single market to ensure these services remain high-quality, affordable and accessible to all?”

All very well – managing to guarantee high quality, affordable and accessible public services is exactly the sort of thing the PES should want. But there are two fundamental misconceptions here: firstly that public services are necessarily good at the moment, and secondly that market forces necessarily challenge the public service ethos. The letter is intentionally vague about private enterprise: liberalisation does not necessarily mean privatisation.

So what about each of the four policy areas Rasmussen mentions?

First of all healthcare. This is very controversial as each European country has different systems and different payment methods. So any possibility for patients to move for treatment is going to cause all sorts of tensions and tumult. But no European country has a US-style pay to be treated system and if some countries have an excess of specialists it only makes sense to be able to be treated elsewhere. So if everyone treads carefully this should be possible to sort out, and in principle it should be fine.

Secondly railways. Liberalisation of railway services is something I happen to know a lot about; I wrote a Masters Thesis about it. There is a basic principle in railways that network investment is something that has to be looked after by the state, I don’t think that is open to challenge. Beyond that competition in services is a good thing – if there’s adequate capacity why not have a slow, cheap service and a fast, premium service on the same route? When it comes to services in rural areas you set the right public service agreements when tendering and it should not matter which firm runs the services. Lastly – and most significantly – state run enterprises can profit from liberalisation too. The railway engine pictured has a Deutsche Bahn livery and is running in the UK, and Deutsche Bahn is still state owned.

Third, postal services. Once more Germany provides the example here – Deutsche Post has expanded internationally, gradually developing its business. At the same time state operators like Royal Mail and La Poste have withered, their national monopolies being knawed away at by private sector competitors. It’s inherently negative to want to defend a national operator, well, just because it’s a national operator and it employs a load of people. Postal volumes are declining across Europe as it is – maintaining things as they are presently is not an option.

Lastly, energy. Here the case for a functioning European market is surely clearer than in any of the other 3 cases. No European country is energy independent, we all rely on each other for gas and electricity imports and exports. So how should these supplies be organised? We could go for the option of some Europe-wide price limits, a Europe-wide energy market regulator or something like that, or alternatively try to make sure that there’s a fair and competitive market at the wholesale level for gas and electricity. There’s no way to defend the status quo, so a proper functioning market is a must.

In essence, the PES has the right idea – that services should be high-quality, affordable and accessible to all – but it seems there is a lack of coherent and optimistic thinking about how that should be done. It’s vital that every citizen – from Limerick to Luleå, Braga to Brasov – has access to affordable and excellent quality healthcare, the very best public transport, affordable and efficient postal services, and fairly priced gas and electricity. Yet Rasmussen’s letter does not know whether to look forward or back; it reminisces for times past and also tries to look forward. That’s not an easy line to defend in an election campaign.