Rocco Buttiglione - CC / Flickr

Back in the autumn of 2004 I was working in London. It was a year or so before I even started this blog and I was working as a civil servant on EU energy policy. News reached us that a controversial Italian nominee to the European Commission, Rocco Buttiglione, had caused a fuss in the European Parliament due to his views about families and gay rights.

In a matter of a fortnight it was done, the EP had managed to remove Buttiglione. It was swift, decisive, values based, and – above all – unexpected. It was probably the only good thing that Martin Schulz, leader of the S&D Group in the European Parliament has ever done. There was Buttiglione, he said foolish and unpleasant things, members of the EP stood together ideologically and out he went.

Fast-forward 5 years and here we are again. Or probably not. A new Commission team ready to take office, a little delayed because of the Irish referendum, and with a little extra potential spice thrown in because of the new top positions created by the Treaty of Lisbon.

So what’s the European Parliament going to do over the next few weeks?

The answer to that is, I fear, absolutely nothing. Jean Quatremer has some quotes from a cross section of French MEPs, all who basically say that we should all be optimistic about the nominations. Even Schulz sounds conciliatory, stating that Europe’s populations are more concerned by jobs than they are by the nominations to the top positions.

Perhaps we should rephrase, that Schulz is concerned about his own prospects for a top job – President of the EP for the second half of the term – and does not want to rock the boat now?

Or is it maybe that the European Parliament feels it has already won?

That’s the line harshly underlined in this entry on The Economist’s Charlemagne blog. Over the last 3 months The Economist, and especially the Charlemagne blog, has been head and shoulders above any other publication (and I include the FT in that) in its interpretation of what has been going on with regard to the EU’s top jobs travails, and perhaps its line explains the compliant nature of the EP towards Ashton and van Rompuy now. The whole of The Economist’s post is here and this (from the 5th paragraph) caught my eye:

Regular readers will know I think the European Parliament is full of far too many B Team mediocrities who could not make it in national politics, and who like nothing better than scoring big wins against national governments. Some will say that is just my prejudice. I wish I could take you with me when I talk to officials, diplomats, businessmen and even members of the European Parliament, whose devotion to deep European integration often far exceeds mine, and listen in on our conversations about the parliament. As a body it is really, seriously looked down on by anyone unfortunate enough to have dealings with the place.

Having worked for a dire MEP a few years ago I have to sadly say I agree.

Yet all of this now will surely prove to be a pyrrhic victory. The line that the Parliament managed to ‘win’ and ended up with 2 rather uninspiring candidates for the top jobs is not going to hold much weight with any voters, just as Schulz’s cooperation with the EPP is not really going to help much either. And while we’re at it, even if the EP does do things that are useful to promote job growth the EU as Schulz claims to want, is anyone even going to credit the EP with that success anyway?

The European Parliament ought to have the guts to take on the Commission over the nominees. Candidates like Günter Oettinger and Laszlo Andor (still no Wikipedia page for him!) are hardly qualified to serve in the EU’s executive and only the European Parliament can show that. Julien Frisch wants the EP to take a stand and so do I. But I suspect it’s not going to happen.

Communist Statue - CC / Flickr

I’ve come across this little summary from PressEurop of an article from the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza which looks at comments within the EPP saying that anyone who formerly co-operated with “repressive regimes and undemocratic organizations” be denied the post of Commissioner. This is essentially a way of saying that anyone with a Communist past be denied a post, with Czech nominee Füle and Hungarian nominee Andor (and presumably Damanaki?) This EPP line sounds rather familiar – it’s the same one used against the rumoured candidacy of Massimo D’Alema to become EU High Representative, with Joseph Daul, head of the EPP group in the Parliament stating that a former communist would not be an acceptable candidate (see end of this in Italian).

So what is going on here?

First of all this is probably the result of the sort of everyday games that are the norm in Czech and Hungarian politics. It’s worth noting that Füle was nominated by an interim government that actually comprises ODS, a party that actually sat with the EPP in the EP before jumping ship to ECR that are even further to the right. But now ODS cannot protect their nominee?

Secondly, is the EPP trying to get its own back for the Buttiglione fiasco 5 years ago, with the main front against the Italian being led my Martin Schulz?

Lastly, what does all of this say about the inability of Europe’s politicians to forgive and forget? The regimes and administrations of the countries of central and eastern Europe are full of individuals who worked for Communist regimes. What other option was there for many? And many of those – Aleksander Kwaśniewski for example – have subsequently played a role in democratic politics. Is it now, 20 years on from the fall of the wall, impossible to renounce a Communist past? And why is all of this anti-Communist sentiment being aired now in the corridors of Brussels?

The left in Brussels (Schulz, Rasmussen) need to be careful here. If politicians on the left are automatically excluded because they once were communists then you can forget having any left-ish Commissioners from the countries of central and eastern Europe for some time to come.

[UPDATE]
Eurosocialiste in the comments has reminded me that Barroso was once a Maoist:

So that’s the rebuttal that Schulz should use in the EP!

People in the EP are also having a go at Ashton for once having done some things for CND. Big deal.

Irish Flag - CC / Flickr

The European Parliament has had to make one formal adjustment for June’s elections – as opposed to the 750 MEPs foreseen in the Treaty of Lisbon (rejected by the Irish), 732 MEPs will instead be elected. A few countries get a few less MEPs.

Easy. Well, perhaps not…

The first task of the new EP is to sort out its own structures – President, Vice Presidents, Committees, Committee chairs etc. Even with Graham Watson trying to break the status quo this should be smooth enough.

Then it gets complex. Normally the period July-September would be used by the EP to approve the Council’s nominee for Commission President, and to hold the hearings for the approval of the Commission team. The problems this time are two-fold, entirely as a result of Ireland and the Treaty of Lisbon.

Firstly the Treaty of Nice (currently in force) states that there shall be ‘less’ Commissioners than there are Member States, but it does not say how big the Commission team shall be. The Treaty of Lisbon, with the caveat granted to keep the Irish happy, will ensure each country still gets a Commissioner, presumably with one of the twenty-seven being the new High Rep / EU Foreign Policy person. So should everyone calculate according to the Nice rules, or the Lisbon rules? If everyone is banking on the latter then all hearings for the new Commissioners are going to have to take place late in September, after the second Irish referendum.

Secondly, what about the Commission President? It looks more of an odds-on certainty that vacuous incumbent Barroso will be re-nominated, and the EPP are pushing for that to all be done and dusted in June or July. How will that play in Ireland, the same head of the executive there once more?

Perhaps more importantly, what is the European Parliament going to spend the summer doing? Plotting and speculating would be my best guess. For the longer the EP broods, waiting to get its teeth stuck into some legislation while the Commission’s future is on ice due to the Irish, the more scheming MEPs are going to be digging around in the CVs of possible Commissioner nominees to see if they can dredge up something akin to the Buttiglione affair of 2004.

While everyone has their eye on the EP elections now, and the Irish referendum in the autumn, the period in between could be very rocky indeed, with a new European Parliament that’s going to be searching for something to do.

EU Flag - Creative Commons / Flickr

Every fifth year is decisively different for the EU: election years. And this year is one of those years. For the 40% of the population that will go to vote it’s a relatively minor event, but in Brussels itself election years are very different. MEPs try to cram a few extra reports into the few sessions in spring, the European Commission winds down, and then everyone plays a game of chicken behind closed doors to determine how the juicy jobs are going to be allocated. At best it all looks opaque, at worst you get a mess similar to that caused by Rocco Buttiglione.

The EP election debate, in as far as there will be one about EU matters, will be dominated by a debate to what extent the EU should influence our lives. Eurosceptics will bemoan the ‘Brussels Bureaucrats’ taking away national power, and the governments in power won’t contradict this to say that it was their permanent representations that gave the go ahead to everything anyway. In the meantime the mainstream parties will put forward safe candidates that are not going to do anything radical on the election campaign trail.

Then there’s the issue of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The Czech Republic took on this task yesterday, meaning the scary combination of Topolanek’s weak government, and Vaclav Klaus, will be responsible for giving the EU direction. The Presidency website looks like something made out of lego and I’m worried what will happen if the EU hits a crises with these guys in the chair.

Lastly the new Commission: we’ll almost certainly get flaccid Barroso back for a second term (Anyone But Barroso if you don’t want it!), the only Commissioner who is remotely down to earth and communicative will step down, and most of the member states will either nominate relative unknowns or people that they have outlived their useful lives in national politics.

So what hope for anything positive in 2009? I’m not hopeful… And I haven’t even mentioned Ireland and the Treaty of Lisbon.