Comments on: There are 2 excellent candidates for EU Foreign Minister, but there’s not a hope either will be appointed

By: Carl Gardner

Carl Gardner — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:03:48 +0000

How could a system of electing these people work? Your idea, Jon, of having real politics at an EU level seems to me right. People need to have a choice – and to see how that choice affects what the EU actually does.

So how should we do it? Should both the Commission President and European Council President be elected? A bit confusing, perhaps. At least the President of the Commission in effect needs to be confirmed by the EP, though. So perhaps the priority is to elect the new Presidency post.

How about this: at EP elections (or at the same time if you want to preserve strict separation of powers) each EP grouping puts forward a candidate for European Council President. All of Europe votes, and there’s one winner. That person then appoints the C’ion President and HiRep, subject to EP confirmation. Importantly, those names should be announced before the election so that we all know who is likely to get the posts before we vote.

By: Ralf Grahn

Ralf Grahn — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:32:55 +0000

Declaration 6 of the Treaty of Lisbon treats the offices of President of the European Council, President of the Commission and High Representative as a package, insofar as “due account is to be taken of the need to respect the geographical and demographic diversity of the Union and its Member States”. (Nothing is said about politics or gender, by the way.)

In addition, the Lisbon Treaty requires a number of implementing decisions, if it enters into force.

The Swedish Council Presidency has made openness one of its main principles.

Collecting these threads, shouldn’t the Swedish Council Presidency start publishing draft decisions, principles for open nominations and public debates about the merits of the candidates to appear?

By: Henning Meyer

Henning Meyer — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:38:50 +0000

I’ll go for Joschka!

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:23:50 +0000

It’s not so much ‘welcome to the camp’ as ‘have been part of the camp for years, but kind of forget he exists still!’

By: Kosmopolito

Kosmopolito — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:17:52 +0000

Welcome to the Joschka camp.

I actually talked to someone the other day who is regularly in contact with diplomats and when he realised I was German, the first thing he mentioned was the possibility of Fischer becoming EU Foreign minister. I was quite surprised as his name does not often come up these days (except in our blogs of course).

So, you never know what is going on behind the scenes. And usually the favourites don’t make it in the end.