Brussels, 02/09/2009 (Agence Europe) - Leadership is what the EU needs and the next president of the European Commission must possess it in spades. This is the overall consensus which emerged from a debate in Brussels on Tuesday 1 September on the recommendations made by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel to the forthcoming European Commission (for the content of these "memos" on economic priorities between 2010 and 2015, see EUROPE 9964). As to whether José Manuel Barroso will be the man of the moment (a question Bruegel did not venture to answer), the views of those who took the floor differed. Unsurprisingly.
The crisis has put the European institutions to the test, stressed Annemie Neyts Uyttebroek, President of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) and member of the European Parliament (ALDE, Belgium), whose criticism of the current Commission president remains moderate.
“Europe is at a turning point", said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who preferred to personalise the issue: "if we do not win the battle of the European Commission, all your memos will be useless", said the co-president of the Greens-EFA Group at the EP ironically, stressing the Commission's silence in the sequence of preparations for the G20 (instead of which, Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown are steering the ship).
“We need leadership", but "we have had a president of the European Commission with a chronic lack of ambition", said Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. “We need a new ambitious strategy for the EU and leadership has to be taken by the president of the Commission", stressed the president of the Party of European Socialists (PES).
From the perspective of Elmar Brok (EPP-ED), on the other hand, Bruegel's recommendations provide the opportunity to focus on ideas at a time when it is mainly people under discussion. However, the German MEP believes that we need a Commission which will "take the lead" and a president who will improve the functioning of the College of Commissioners. (A.B./transl.fl)