Belgian surrealism

The trouble with reporting from Brussels, a long-time BBC television correspondent once complained, is that the pictures are so boring. Gray men in gray suits get out of their official limousines and enter ugly buildings. They emerge some hours later to talk - often through an interpreter - in a language that, even when interpreted, is difficult to understand because it is strewn with jargon and gobbledy-gook. Then, they get back into their cars. This does not make for good television.

The TV producers were rooting the night of Nov. 19 for Tony Blair to be chosen as the first president of the European Council. What they wanted was a media star: a European who could match Barack Obama for sound bites. Instead, they got a throwback to the glory days of radio.

The choice of Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium's prime minister, to be president of the European Council and Catherine Ashton, the European commissioner for trade, to be the EU's foreign policy chief makes a certain kind of sense to EU policy-wonks in Brussels. But whether it can come to make sense to the outside world depends on events over the next two years or so - and, perhaps, on a bit of media training.

The Czech Republic can claim some share of responsibility for Nov. 19's outcome because the appointments were affected by the delay in ratifying the Lisbon Treaty.

The post of president of the European Council is an innovation of the Lisbon Treaty, to be superimposed on the existing arrangement: a six-month presidency of the Council of Ministers that rotates among the member states (it was the Czech Republic's turn in the first half of 2009). The Lisbon Treaty also makes a change to the status of the high representative for foreign policy, the post held until Dec. 1 by Javier Solana. Solana has worked as the most-senior official in the secretariat of the Council of Ministers, the body in Brussels that represents the national governments. But he has had no line of authority over the staff or the resources of the European Commission. Under the Lisbon Treaty, the foreign policy chief will combine Solana's powers with being a vice president of the European Commission. The aim is supposed to be a more coherent foreign policy, where all parts of the EU are working to the same goals. To that end, the Lisbon Treaty creates an EU diplomatic service, which will be composed of staff drawn from the commission, the Council of Ministers secretariat and the diplomatic corps of the member states.

So, without the Lisbon Treaty, the jobs that were at stake Nov. 19 would not exist. A conspiracy of silence about who might be appointed to the jobs persisted until after Ireland's second referendum on the treaty at the beginning of October. Any official discussion of who should be appointed to the posts risked giving the impression that the EU was taking the result of Ireland's vote for granted. Only once the "yes" vote was delivered could officials and politicians begin serious discussion about the jobs. Even then, there was further delay, thanks to Czech President Václav Klaus. His demands for further concessions before he would complete the Czech ratification of Lisbon scuppered the ambitions of the Swedish government, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of Ministers, to make the appointments at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels Oct. 29-30. In retrospect, that delay was significant: It effectively killed off the chances of Tony Blair becoming president of the European Council.

Ironically, the idea of a "permanent" president was a British invention. (The president is appointed for two and a half years, which is short by most standards but permanent compared with a six-month presidency of the Council of Ministers.) Back in the days of the convention that drew up an ill-fated constitution for the EU, the British put forward the idea of a permanent president as a way to provide greater continuity of purpose for the European Council. The rotating presidency, so the argument went, left the EU too much at the mercy of whatever country was in the chair for six months. The policy priorities tended to fluctuate and (though this was not articulated too loudly, for fear of giving offense) the quality of both politicians and civil servants was uneven. (It may be noted in passing that the collapse of the Czech government in the midst of the Czech presidency of the EU gave a certain kind of "I told you so" justification to this argument.) But the idea of a permanent EU president replacing the rotating presidency, though espoused by the likes of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, was viewed with suspicion by smaller EU member states. They feared the president would be the agent of the bigger powers and that doing away with the rotating presidency would rob them of their chance to shape the EU's agenda. A classic EU compromise was reached: The two types of presidency would work in parallel. The country holding the rotating presidency would continue to chair the meetings of the national ministers when they were discussing sectoral business - farm ministers, telecoms ministers, energy ministers and so on. But the permanent president would chair meetings of the European Council - the heads of state and/or government - while the foreign policy chief would chair meetings of the foreign ministers.

This compromise meant the presidency job that was being fought for Nov. 19 was never as glorious as the media label of "EU president" might suggest. In corporate-speak, the role is that of chairman of the board of directors, but without the powers of a chief executive. That said, the role is not well-defined in the Lisbon Treaty, and there were those who hoped the post could become bigger if a big person was appointed to the job. This was precisely why the small member states - notably the Benelux countries (all founding members of the EU) - were out to stop Blair.

His best chance of the presidency lay in the big member states bouncing the others into the decision, taking them by surprise. If Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi had said this was what they wanted, the pressure would have been hard to withstand. But the long, drawn-out ratification of the Lisbon Treaty meant there was no element of surprise. The postponement of a decision from the European Council meeting Oct. 29 to the (hastily arranged) meeting Nov. 19 saw off Blair's chances. What emerged from the Oct. 29 meeting and the conclaves that immediately preceded it was an agreement that the center-right European People's Party (EPP) should put forward a candidate for Council president while the Party of European Socialists put forward a candidate for the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. The decision by the EPP, whose dominance over European politics was consolidated by June's European Parliament elections, to covet the presidency post was a body-blow to the Blairite cause. (Note that the Benelux countries are all led by prime ministers from the EPP family.) Hitherto, one of Blair's selling points was that he was backed by the center-right while nominally being a social democrat. From that point on, Herman Van Rompuy swiftly emerged as the EPP's leading candidate, with Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, as another possibility.

Thereafter, the dominant feature of the contest was the inability of the social democrats to come up with plausible candidates. Just as they had failed to come up with a possible rival to José Manuel Barroso for the presidency of the commission and with names other than Blair for the presidency of the council, so they struggle to come up with candidates for the foreign policy job. David Miliband, the UK foreign minister, was much talked about but ruled himself out. (For a UK politician, the hope of future greatness - succeeding Gordon Brown as Labour leader and David Cameron as prime minister - is still more attractive than a European job.)

Massimo D'Alema, a former foreign minister and prime minister of Italy, was momentarily a candidate, but unpalatable to Poland and Germany because of a communist past and some anti-Israel remarks. Other than that, the socialist cupboard was bare. So, on the afternoon of Nov. 19, at a meeting of socialist prime ministers in Austria's EU Embassy, Gordon Brown found that, if he ditched Blair for president, he could put forward Catherine Ashton - a relative unknown - for foreign policy chief.

She was hastily summoned back to Brussels, and the deal was done. The Van Rompuy-Ashton ticket was conveniently balanced: center-right vs. center-left, small country vs. big country, male vs. female.

Ashton's appointment is a big gamble. Her job has significant powers, and she is a relative novice, albeit that she was a minister in the UK House of Lords. She has never been elected to public office, which might put her at a disadvantage to the EU's foreign ministers (whom she must coax into line). But she was quietly effective as trade commissioner, smoothing feathers that had been ruffled by her predecessor, Peter Mandelson.

The big winner is Barroso. There is about to be an inter-institutional battle between the council and the commission over the creation of the EU's diplomatic service. Now, the person at the top is someone who comes from the commission - Ashton has been trade commissioner for slightly more than a year. Van Rompuy is from the EPP, the same political family as Barroso. In addition, since neither Ashton nor Van Rompuy hogs the limelight, Barroso need not fear being cast in the shade.

The big loser was, perhaps, Belgium. Van Rompuy, who is a veteran of Belgian politics, a former budget minister, party leader, speaker of the chamber of representatives, was a reluctant prime minister. He was brought in less than a year ago after Yves Leterme stood down to fight (successfully) corruption allegations. He inherited a divided nation and has calmed the situation. As Leterme returns to the premiership, Belgians are left to ponder whether the reflected glory that they enjoy from Van Rompuy's elevation is worth the loss of his leadership. As the Czech Republic knows all too well, finding and holding on to a good prime minister is not easy.

- The author is editor of European Voice, a weekly newspaper based in Brussels covering EU affairs, www.EuropeanVoice.com.

Tim King can be reached at
features@praguepost.com