Commentaries

If not Blair, who for EU Council president?

Within a couple of weeks, European Union leaders are going to choose the first president of the European Council now the Lisbon Treaty has finally been ratified.

It won’t be Tony Blair, given the opposition of his European Socialist comrades to the former British prime minister and the hostility of several west European governments. So it’s time to subject some of the other contenders to the same scrutiny that Blair has faced as the undeclared front-runner in this surreal race. Most of the 27 EU leaders appear to want a low-key, consensus-building chairman of their quarterly summit meetings rather than a high-profile globe-trotting statesman.

Opponents of Blair cited several grounds — his loyalty to George W. Bush and support for the Iraq war; the fact that he failed to bring Britain into the euro single currency or the Schengen zone of passport-free travel in his 10 years in power; the fact that he is a strong personality from a large member state. r. Let’s see how the other aspirants fare on those criteria, and what other skeletons they may have in their closet.

Mr Who for EU president? EU seeks anyone but Blair

Who will be the first president of the European Council of EU leaders? Anyone but Tony Blair. That is the only clear message to emerge from a European Union summit, where the appointments of the EU’s two new senior office-holders is not on the agenda but is on everyone’s mind.

The appointment process is typical of the surreal way in which the 27-nation bloc does business. The job is poorly defined in the Lisbon treaty reforming the EU’s institutions, which is expected to come into force in the next few weeks.  But it is clear that most leaders are looking for a consensus-building summit chairman rather than a high-profile president of Europe.

There are no officially declared candidates. But Blair has been the front-runner for months, with the public backing of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and of the British government. He was not in Brussels on Thursday, but his name was at the centre of debate in the summit corridors, with many people determined to kill his phantom candidacy off.

Before the summit began, his erstwhile European Socialist comrades agreed, according to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, that they would prefer the EU foreign policy chief job to go to a socialist. That effectively ruled out the presidency for Blair, since the Socialists have no chance of getting both jobs.

Veteran Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker meanwhile announced he is available for the top post even though he acknowledged he had little chance of getting it. Juncker’s kamikaze candidacy looks like a suicide mission to blow Blair out of the race. The two have been engaged in a long personal vendetta fuelled by Blair’s blocking of Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt’s bid for the European Commission presidency in 2004, and his veto of an EU budget deal brokered by Juncker in 2005.

In British eyes, Juncker personfies “old Europe” — a federalist from a tiny country which prospers as a sort of giant safe-deposit box at the heart of a Franco-German Europe. For Juncker, Blair embodies London’s arrogant detachment from the EU. Despite his pro-European rhetoric, the founder of New Labour never brought his country into the euro single currency or the Schengen zone of passport-free travel in 10 years in power. “This is not about personal glory or an extended ego trip,” Juncker told the daily Luxembourg Wort in a clear swipe at Blair’s undeclared bid.

The likelihood is that neither Blair nor Juncker will find broad enough support among EU leaders, effectively cancelling each other out. That will open the way for a more consensual, insipid figure without either Blair’s globe-trotting stardom or Juncker’s federalist outlook. Several such potential candidates were preeening themselves at the summit.

Ireland puts the EU show back on the road

The EU show is back on the road. Sixteen months after Irish voters brought the European Union’s tortured process of institutional reform to a juddering halt by voting “No” to the Lisbon treaty, the same electorate has turned out in larger numbers to say “Yes” by a two-thirds majority.

This is an immense relief for the EU’s leadership. After three lost referendums in France, the Netherlands and Ireland, and a record low turnout in this year’s European Parliament elections, the democratic legitimacy of the European integration process was increasingly open to question. The Irish vote will not completely silence those doubts. Opponents are already accusing the EU of have bullied the Irish into voting again on the same text, and of blackmailing them with economic disaster if they did not vote the right way this time.

Try this for size from a British Euro-sceptic, Lorraine Mullally of the Open Europe think-tank:

This is a sad day for democracy in Europe.  The Lisbon Treaty transfers huge new powers to the EU and away from ordinary people and national parliaments.  EU elites will be popping the champagne and slapping each other on the back for managing to bully Ireland in to reversing its first verdict on this undemocratic Treaty. But most ordinary people around Europe will not welcome this news, as they were never given a chance to have their say on the Treaty.  We should all be deeply worried about the way in which EU leaders have gone about forcing this Treaty on us.  Polls show that the majority of people across Europe want to be consulted on major transfers of power such as this – but politicians in Brussels aren’t interested in what the people want.

The fact that the turnout in Ireland was higher, and the majority larger than in the first referendum may blunt such arguments. But EU leaders will clearly learn one key lesson from the Irish precedent: the days of grand treaties on ever closer European union are over. With unanimous ratification by 27 member states required, the probability of at least one country rejecting change is just too high.

For better or worse, the Lisbon treaty will be Europe’s rulebook for a generation. I reckon there won’t be another major overhaul of EU institutions for 20 years. Any further integration will take the form either of closer cooperation among groups of like-minded countries on issues such as defence, justice or taxation, or perhaps of limited, specialised treaties on policy areas such as energy and climate change.

The Lisbon treaty, and its predecessor, the defunct EU constitution, were never the federalist blueprints that their opponents claimed. But Lisbon does offer he prospect of somewhat more efficient leadership and decision-making in an enlarged Union. More decisions will be taken by majority vote instead of unanimity, notably on justice and home affairs. The directly elected European Parliament will have power over more legislation. And national parliaments will have a better chance to scrutinise, and send back, EU legislation.