Tag Archives: President of the European Council

Baroness Ashton for High Rep – really?

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.

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Stephen Wall might be a brilliant boffin, but he’s not the person to make a citizens’ case for the EU

EU Flag - CC / Flickr

EU Flag - CC / Flickr

As quoted in this piece at EUObserver:

A former British EU ambassador, Stephen Wall, also poured cold water on the scheme, saying that the appointment is about balancing national and political interests in Europe, rather than individual merit.

“Given that they have to placate the right, the left, the north, the south, the large and small nations, you could have a brilliant presentation but, if the politics didn’t fit, what would be the point?” he said in an article in the New York Times on Tuesday.

This is in response to a Polish proposal that candidates for EU top jobs should make presentations to EU leaders.

Let me reply to Stephen’s point. The President of the European Council has no democratic legitimacy at all (appointment is by heads of state and government, no role for the European Parliament), and the High Representative for Foreign Policy is not much better (s/he is part of the Commission team, so needs EP approval at least). But where else, in whatever appointment for a top position does merit not even come into it?

If Wall were still the UK’s permanent representative it might have been right to defend his position behind closed doors. Now, as Vice Chair of Business for New Europe, he has a public relations role and he’s just essentially saying we shouldn’t actually give a shit about whether the person is any good, let’s stick with a diplomats’ stitch up – that’s not acceptable from him. If you’re an advocate for a positive role for the UK in the EU, and for an EU that delivers good policy, you should want a good President of the European Council or High Rep, however unlikely in reality we all know that is going to be.

In short Wall is no person to make any sort of case to citizens about the EU.

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A ‘citizens’ campaign for Mary Robinson starts to roll

Mary Robinson - CC / Flickr

Mary Robinson - CC / Flickr

No sooner have the Irish ratified the Treaty of Lisbon than a campaign starts to try to get an Irish citizen nominated to be President of the European Council – Mary Robinson, former Irish President. If you back her candidacy you can join the Facebook group here – there are more than 1300 members as I write, not bad for a few days of work. More on the issue of a woman for at least one of the three top jobs can be found at Eurosocialist’s blog here.

I’m absolutely in favour of the need for more women in EU top jobs, and Blair’s candidacy makes me rather nervous – Blair at the European Council and Barroso in the Commission will produce only one winner, and it will not be the Portuguese…

But is Mary Robinson the right candidate? She has the right background and standing, and a large number of Irish people I follow on Twitter from across the political spectrum seem to like the idea of her candidacy. Can someone maybe enlighten me as to the reasons why she’s actually good?

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Patten and Blair: two more strong non-starters

Chris Patten - CC / Flickr

Chris Patten - CC / Flickr

Following on from my post about Bildt and Fischer, today is the time to look at two other strong candidates for top jobs in the EU, this time both of them Brits – Chris Patten and Tony Blair. I’m prompted to write this post after the FT carried a story that Patten would be “very positive” about the idea of taking the EU Foreign Minister position later this year.

Firstly, Patten. My first reaction was ‘hell, that’s going to really annoy David Cameron’, and secondly ‘isn’t he too old’.

On the first point, Patten, a former Chairman of the Conservative Party, has been causing a few problems for Cameron and the party leadership lately. He was opposed to the idea of the Tories leaving the EPP-ED group in the Parliament, prompting the young turks in the Tory Party to have a go at him. William Hague has already stated he found Patten’s statement “unwise”. So where is all of this coming from? Surely all of this bears the hallmarks of Gordon Brown and scheming in Whitehall; what better way to hammer home the Tories out of the European mainstream message than appointing one of their own to a top EU position, contrary to Cameron’s wishes?

Secondly, does Patten really have the stomach for this? When he stepped down as a European Commissioner in 2004, then aged 60, these were the lines in the BBC story:

The European commissioner, who lost his seat as MP for Bath in 1992, said he planned to retire, taking up writing, broadcasting and do some “serious gardening”.

“This is the last public service job I will do. When I finish it, I will be 60 and I would like to enjoy my sixties as much as I can,” he said.

There’s also an interesting interview with Patten given at the time in the New York Times. Is he the right person to be haring around the world for the next five years?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt he could do the job, and I also have a lot of time and respect for Patten. But somehow I cannot see all of the pieces of the jigsaw falling into place to make this happen.

Tony Blair - CC / Flickr

Tony Blair - CC / Flickr

The second strong candidate for a top EU position, Tony Blair, this time rumoured to want the position as President of the European Council, a job that would be created if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified. Here the case is much more clear-cut than for Patten. There’s no way politically in the UK that Brown could not be seen to be backing Blair for this job (despite all the bad blood between the two in the past). The problems however are elsewhere. Blair is strong, charismatic, outspoken, and followed the USA to war in Iraq contrary to the wishes of France and Germany. OK, that was in 2003, and Blair still has decent working relationships with some member states, but if Bildt, Fischer or Patten are divisive figures then multiply it by 10 for Blair. CEP Blog has a breakdown on how the voting could work. Yet even after the horrors of the Czech Presidency of the EU and some sort of longing for leadership and coherency in the Justus Lipsius building I cannot see how a consensus for Blair could be achieved.

So I reckon Patten, Blair, Bildt and Fischer are all strong non-starters.

[UPDATE - 6.8.09]
A strong, personal case for Patten is made at Crooked Timber.

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If there’s a problem call Tony

Tony Blair - CC / Flickr

Tony Blair - CC / Flickr

So here we go again. The EU has a multitude of problems on its hands: Russia turning off the gas, the Gaza conflict brewing, and no-one really knowing what to do about the economic downturn, least of all the Commission. The Czech Presidency has already made a few gaffes, and there are sure to be a few more from Klaus and co before the end of their 6 months in the chair.

So what does Europe need? A statesman apparently… Today’s FT (more at Euractiv) is reporting that the idea of having Tony Blair as President of the European Council is doing the rounds once more, back on the agenda one year after Sarkozy originally backed the idea. It seems that Sarko’s clout in the French Presidency has made a few people sit up and think…

But hold on a minute. Why would this idea be any better now than it was 12 months ago? OK, we know what can be done if the EU has some energetic leadership, but a few other factors have changed decisively against Blair. Firstly Blair does not seem to have had much of an impact as Middle East Envoy – would he be a sane face for the EU in that issue? Secondly, two of the major issues facing the EU – economic matters and gas supplies – are a mixture of market matters and foreign policy. Would Blair grandstanding be any good to fix those things? Seems to me that the case for one tough president is stronger than ever, rather than a statesman in the European Council and a weak flaccid lump in the Commission.

And then there’s also the small matter of the referendum in Ireland on the Treaty of Lisbon… If Blair is rumoured once more to want the top job is that going to make it any more or less likely that the Irish are going to vote Yes?

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