The EU institutions are keeping their heads down at the moment about preparations for application of the Lisbon Treaty (see yesterday's column), which is understandable because they must not give the impression that they think the national ratification processes currently under way are no more than a rubber stamp. Observers, analysts and study groups, however, can speak out and there is a range of documentation on areas to be clarified and potential solutions. In addition, there are guesses and leaks about politicians who might be proposed to hold the various positions and it is this aspect that is logically generating the greatest interest and reaction.
Define the role. When a name is put forward by an official figure, it is immediately echoed in the media. We saw this when the French president suggested Tony Blair for the stable presidency of the European Council. But official circles generally reject such predictions. Jean-Claude Juncker, also quoted as one of the candidates, has reacted by saying that things have to be done in the right order. Ratify the Lisbon Treaty first and then decide on the president's mandate and powers. He said there were at least 30 different issues to be sorted out - Should the president have a secretariat? Who will chair the General Affairs Council? What will happen with the prime minister of a country holding the presidency of the EU (at the moment, it is the prime minister that chairs the European Council meetings)? Juncker said he wanted answers to these questions. The president, he said, would either be an active European politician or would simply cut ribbons and open garden fetes. Asked about his own plans, Juncker said it all depended on the job because he had no intention of being there just to open garden fêtes.
At around the same time, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (who chaired the process of drawing up the draft constitution that formally launched the idea of a stable Presidency of the European Council, later added to the Lisbon Treaty) said that the president would be elected by the European Council on a qualified majority vote but nothing has been said about the procedure further upstream. Will politicians have to formally apply? Can criteria be added like speaking major EU languages or experience in the work of the European Council so as not to be caught unawares? Where will the president actually live? How many members of staff can the president have? What resources will be made available? VGE suggested setting up a small group of no more than five or six individuals to suggest answers to these questions. He also talked about linking the outcome of the European elections with the process of appointing a president of the European Council.
Tony Blair. The importance being attributed to this new presidency (only one of the institutional innovations in the Reform Treaty) has been demonstrated by the sheer quantity and strength of reaction to the Nicolas Sarkozy's idea of mooting Tony Blair. In London, the Guardian newspaper devoted its front page to the issue. Reaction has generally been negative, not to Tony Blair as such but to the idea of a British national at the helm. On the personal front, people recognise that Blair has many good qualities, including his dedication to Europe. As prime minister of the UK, he made a real effort to get his country into the thick of European affairs. Juncker commented that Blair is probably the most European of all British politicians. But how could the voice of Europe (the telephone number required by Henry Kissinger in his time when he wanted to talk with Europe) be the former prime minister of a country which is not in the euro? A country which retains barriers to the free circulation of Europeans because it refuses to join Schengen? A country which has called for exemption from the Charter of Fundamental Rights and will remain on the margins of future progress on justice issues? The very country which, it if had the chance to vote, would clearly reject the very treaty that created the job that that Tony Blair would be called upon to take up?
Philippe de Schoutheete's arguments against this idea are watertight. The idea of calling on Europeans to express their opposition to Tony Blair's candidacy by email has been incredibly successful: in a few days, the site http://www.stopblair.eu got thousands of signatures. No official support has been given to the idea of Tony Blair becoming president. Daniel Cohn Bandit said he would oppose Blair with all his might. French European Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet said France did not have any candidates and would make its views clear at the right time, in 2009 at the earliest.
The job should not be blown out of proportion. Exit Tony Blair? Possibly, but this is not important because there will be plenty of suggestions - the presidency of the European Council is under the spotlight. It's only logical - chairing European summits and representing Europe in meetings with the president of the United States and Vladimir Putin (official hat he happens to be wearing at the time) is no laughing matter. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing says that Europe is looking for its George Washington. I am not going to draw up a list but there are a few names in all the papers: the above-mentioned Jean-Claude Juncker, the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and others.
Official circles are keeping their lips buttoned, of course, and the clarification process is more a matter of not over-estimating the role of the new presidency compared with the role of the president of the European Commission, the high representative for external relations and the president of the European Parliament. The EP will play an important role not only in appointing its president (who logically will depend on the outcome of the 2009 European elections) but also two other functions, for the high representative will be vice-president of the European Commission, and the European Parliament will therefore also have an input. Here too, many candidates are being mentioned: Guy Verhofstadt, Joschka Fischer, Michel Barnier and Javier Solana (who already has experience in the job, which he created by actually doing it, as one analyst puts it.) But being the vice-president of the European Commission will turn the job into something new, and plenty of questions are being raised about this. When it comes to chairing the European Commission, extending the mandate of the current president (Barroso) is no longer being discussed. Jo Leinen, chair of the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, believes that José Manuel Barroso will now be a candidate for heading the EPP group. Everything will depend on the outcome of the European elections.
The future balance of the European institutions remains to be determined. European circles generally want to stop the stable presidency of the European Council becoming too important, which would shift the balance in favour of intergovernmental cooperation to the detriment of the Community method. The EP president, Hans-Gert Pöttering, has said that the future president of the European Council should not be a European prima donna lording it over the others. He explained that the EU needed team-players because it was highly complex and could only work if all the different institutions and presidents cooperate loyally and without any hidden agendas (see issue 9616 of our bulletin). Jean-Luc Dehaene in his interview with Helmut Brüls, quoted in yesterday's column, said that the people to be appointed had to move in the direction indicated by the treaty, which did not want to create a president of Europe but rather a president of the European Council and this should be taken into account when deciding on the powers of the president of the European Council.
The analysis by high-ranking European Parliament official Jean-Guy Giraud confirms this. Based on the work of the Convention (in this connection, the Lisbon Treaty incorporates the measures from the draft constitutional treaty without any amendments), he notes that the aim of the new job is to make the European Council more effective but not to alter the institutional balance of the Parliament-Council-Commission. This new president with a long term of office would ensure a degree of continuity between meetings, ensuring follow-up and maintaining cohesion. He or she would represent the EU in CFSP issues among foreign heads of state but vis-à-vis foreign ministers, this role would be taken up by the high representative, who runs the CFSP in accordance with the guidelines decided by the European Council and the General Affairs Council (chaired by the high representative). Giraud recognises that at the end of the day, given the innovative nature of the new job and the very general nature of the measures of the treaty in this connection, it will be created in practice by the experience and character traits of the first people to hold the post.
Defence issues should not be ignored. In various debates and arguments, one issue has generally been ignored - the very significant innovations in the Reform Treaty when it comes to defence. This media silence is being broken through with, for example, a seminar organised by the European Parliament's Security and Defence Sub-Committee on the ESDP aspects of the Reform Treaty (see report in issue 9600), and the publication in our Documents series (2478) of an analysis by Antonio Missiroli. But the debate is just beginning. I was struck by the arguments of Federico Santopinto on behalf of GRIP (Groupe de recherche et d'information sur la paix et la sécurité), and his rather disturbing conclusions at first sight - without challenging the importance of the 'structured cooperation' foreseen in the Lisbon Treaty for defence issues, the author argues that in practice, the intergovernmental nature of the ESDP has been strengthened by the treaty and this will make structured cooperation more difficult in practice. I shall be returning to this.
(F.R.)