The EU can, and should, reject any new UK commissioner

The British government is trying to find the most palatable candidate to survive European Parliament confirmation. But it is unclear why the EU should accept any British commissioner.

Prime Minister David Cameron's resignation in the hours after the Brexit referendum result on 24 June was the abdication heard round the world. But later that day, there was a less-noticed but also significant resignation in Brussels.

Lord Jonathan Hill, the European Commissioner from the UK, who is in charge of EU financial services, also stepped down. "As we move to a new phase, I don't believe it is right that I should carry on as the British Commissioner as though nothing had happened," he said in a statement. "In line with what I discussed with the President of the Commission some weeks ago, I have therefore told him that I shall stand down."

For awhile, it was unclear whether any new British commissioner would be sent to take his place. But today the Financial Times reported that the UK is about to nominate Sir Julian King, the current British ambassador to France. The Times writes that King would be considered an "apolitical appointment to ensure Britain is not left unrepresented at the EU’s executive body". 

The paper said the European Parliament is likely to reject any nominee that backed Brexit. At the same time, an incoming pro-Brexit government in the UK might be unhappy about having the pro-remain King be their man in the Commission.

But it is unclear to me why any UK nominee should be acceptable to the European Parliament.

Don’t mention the Gaza

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was the object of fury in Israel this week - with the press, the pundits and even the prime minister all calling for her immediate sacking. Her crime? Mentioning the fact that children have been killed in Gaza.

Ashton was attending a Brussels conference on the subject of Palestinian children refugees on Monday when news came that three children had been shot and killed at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. When she took to the podium to address the conference, Ashton broke the news. She then talked about how sad it is when a child loses a life, bringing up last week’s bus accident in Switzerland where 22 Belgian children were killed.

“The Belgian children have lost their lives in a terrible tragedy. And when we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and Sderot [Israel], in different parts of the world — we remember young people and children who lose their lives,” she told the audience (video here).

 When news of her comments reached Israel, the reactions were swift and furious. Israeli papers said her comparison of the shooting of innocent Jewish children with the deaths of Palestinian children during Israeli shelling of Gaza was “grotesque”. They labelled Ashton as anti-Semitic, people compared her to a Nazi, and the papers demanded her immediate removal from office.

Palestinian UN bid divides Europe

I'm at JFK about to fly back to Brussels, and all around the airport you can see signs of this week's general assembly at the United Nations. I saw several pro-Israel and pro-Palestine demonstrations scattered around the city over the past few days, mostly outside hotels where I assume diplomats and leaders were staying.

Despite the best efforts of the United States and her allies to convince him not to, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went ahead on Friday with his request to have the UN recognise Palestine as a 'non-voting observer' member. The machinations around this have been described as a slow-motion "diplomatic car crash" by diplomats. Coming as it does in the middle of the 'Arab spring', the United States knows it will look bad if they use their veto in the security council to deny the request. On the other hand, their close alliance with Israel means that the US government believes it has no choice but to veto the move.

But will the US be the only one to issue the veto? And which US allies will support the bid in a full assembly vote? Europe is showing characteristic disunity on the issue. France, which also holds veto power on the security council, is supporting the Palestinian bid. Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium and Luxembourg have joined France with their support.

Chaos in EU backyard causing panic

The situation in Libya continues to spiral out of control, and EU foreign ministers are scrambling to figure out what to do about it. After the bloc spent days hemming and hawing about whether it would organise an evacuation of EU citizens, Libyan airspace was closed yesterday trapping thousands of EU nationals in the country.

Now there are fears that the country's erratic and defiant leader Colonel Gaddafi will use the trapped Western foreigners as hostages in what is developing into a tense stand-off with the EU. Over the weekend Gaddafi threatened that if the EU criticised his crackdown on protests he would "unleash a flood" of refugees across the Mediterranean to Italy.

The past few days have seen incredible bloodshed in Libya, where Gaddafi's forces have killed as many as 519 protestors. The Libyan air force is even reportedly bombing the protestors from the skies. Yesterday two Libyan pilots landed in Malta seeking asylum, saying they had been ordered to bomb civilians in the protests.

An embarrassing day for Ashton and Van Rompuy

Today's summit of European leaders is winding down, and now everyone is waiting for the prime ministers and presidents to emerge to announce what they have decided for the stability of the Eurozone. Between the euro crisis and the turmoil in Egypt, this council has turned out to bear little resemblance to the gathering it was supposed to be – a special summit on European energy issues.

This is actually the first European Council (the summits of European heads of government) that I've covered. Since my beat is environment, there hasn't been an occasion so far where the leaders have had an environmental issue on the agenda important enough for me to spend the day here. Today was supposed to be different. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, now one year into his newly created position, called for this summit dedicated to energy last year. But as the European debt crisis has raged on, in the past two months it became clear that the seemingly non-pressing issue of energy security and sustainability was going to take a back seat to the crisis. And now that a revolution is underway in Egypt, by yesterday few were expecting to see anything significant come out of this council in the way of energy - even though that was still purportedly the main subject behind today's meeting.

Sure enough, at noon today we received a very short list of conclusions on energy by the council - and there was little to really sink your teeth into. I'm told the leaders spent just an hour talking about energy before moving on to the Egypt issue. Essentially they just looked over the pre-agreed conclusions and signed off on it. Ah well, it did mean I could file my story earlier and be done with it!

Better the devil you know

Both Europe and the United States have been put in an awkward position this month by the unfolding political revolt in Egypt. On one hand, they want to be consistent in encouraging democratic values and they don't want to be seen to be propping up dictatorships. On the other hand, they are terrified of the instability that could be set off by a political meltdown in the Middle East's most populous country. This is not helped by the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is the second most powerful political force in Egypt after the regime of president-for-life Hosni Mubarak.

As the saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Thus, the statements coming out of Brussels and Washington this week have been tepid and non-committal, stressing the need for stability over any ideological talk of overthrowing tyrants. The west is no great fan of Mubarak, but his semi-dictatorial rule has kept Egypt's strong Islamist movement in check and kept the country at peace with Israel. If he goes, there's no telling who might replace him.

The EU has come under particular criticism, as political violence has unfolded around the Mediterranean, for its slow reaction to events in its own backyard. This has been a particular embarrassment for the EU because its new diplomatic arm, the EEAS, was supposed to make Europe more decisive and reactive to foreign policy issues. And yet as one riot after the other has unfolded across the Mediterranean over the past weeks, the EU has been very restrained in its reaction.

EU targets Europe's last dictatorship

The EU is threatening to cut off relations with its Eastern neighbour Belarus and impose a travel ban on its leaders following a brutal crackdown on dissidents in the country during a rigged election last month.

It is perhaps the most crucial test of will yet for the EU's first foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, who is expected to issue an ultimatum to 'Europe's last dictatorship': release the political prisoners arrested during the election or fact a travel ban in the West. She will push EU foreign ministers to adopt the travel ban on 31 January, and all indications are that they will all comply. The US may then follow the EU's lead with joint sanctions.

Today the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the EU to impose a travel ban and asset freeze on all Belarusian officials, judges and security officers involved in the violent crackdown. They are demanding that Belarus re-run the elections in accordance with international standards before the sanctions can be lifted.

Today’s EU-US 'summit': progress or face-saving?

All this week I was inundated with press releases, previews and briefing notices leading up to the big EU-US summit taking place in Lisbon today, the first such summit since the Lisbon Treaty went into force a year ago. From the way the EU institutions were hyping it, you would think this was some kind of massive meeting of powers set to define the course of the next century. The reality? Barack Obama is taking two hours out of his busy schedule while at a NATO summit in Lisbon to meet with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on the sidelines.

Apparently this is all that US officials were willing to offer the new “EU president” even though the EU was originally thinking they could get a separate day with Obama while he was on the continent for the NATO gathering. But the EU grabbed the opportunity for even a two-hour meeting, eager to avoid another massive humiliation after Obama snubbed the union last May when he suddenly backed out of a planned EU-US summit in Madrid. The entire summit was cancelled after that last incident, and apparently EU officials didn’t want to have to go all of 2010 with the US president not meeting with his new EU counterpart.

EU considers closer ties with Cuba

In one of her first moves after the EU's foreign relations arm (the EEAS) comes into existence at the begining of December, the new EU foreign affairs chief Cathy Ashton is going to contact the Cuban government to explore closer ties with Havana, according to news reports today. The development is interesting because it shows how the new EU foreign policy, made possible by the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, may seek in some ways to be a counterweight to American foreign policy. But there are deep divisions within the union about whether it should seek a different policy toward Cuba than the United States.

The EU has in fact had a "common position" on Cuba since 1996, but this policy has been seen by some as a NATO-crafted backing of the American position on Cuba. It says that EU member states will only normalise their links to Cuba if the country makes progress on democracy and human rights. Spain has been the leading voice for increasing ties with Cuba, and over the summer they were keen to highlight to Brussels Cuba's decision to release 52 political prisoners. According to reports, these pleas from Spain have found a sympathetic ear with Ashton.

Belgian elections - the EU fiasco around the corner

Belgians will go to the polls this Saturday to vote for a new government, just two weeks before the country is slated to take over the rotating EU presidency from Spain. Considering that it took Belgium nine months to form a government after the last general election in 2007, Brussels is getting increasingly worried about a potential leadership vacuum in the council after 1 July.

The difficulty, as with everything in Belgium, is over language. The Belgian government collapsed in April over a disagreement between French- and Dutch-speaking parties over whether an electoral district on the outskirts of Brussels should be part of the Brussels Capital Region or Flanders. It may sounds like an innocuous issue but it goes to the heart of the language conflict, as explained in this previous blog entry.

A Gallic Plot?

Yesterday there was an amusing story going around about how the French Europe minister has invited Catherine Ashton, the native Brit recently appointed as the EU’s first foreign minister, to learn “the language of diplomacy” at a school near Avignon.

It was more of a tongue-in-cheek jest than an actual offer for assistance, but Ashton has taken him up on it and will be spending a month this summer in the south of France taking French lessons. But of course France’s offer wasn’t really about language. It reflects the increasing French dissatisfaction with Ashton as she creates the new EU diplomatic corps, which they fear is going to be dominated by the English.

Ashton speaks only rusty French, and she will only take questions at press conferences in English – a fact which has deeply irritated the French media. The fact that Ashton does not speak fluent French has been continually pointed out by those who think she is not qualified for the job. This is particularly true in France, where the phrase “the language of diplomacy” is not used with a smirk or as an old-timey throwback, but as their actual understanding of the world. Of course the reality is that French ceased to be the language of diplomacy 70 years ago, but don’t tell that to the French. Even within the EU, English has largely replaced French as the lingua franca since the accession of the Eastern European member states in 2004.

Tories make nice with Europe, but is it genuine?

When William Hague starts making nice with Europe, you know the Tories are getting very worried about their falling poll numbers. Over the past week the Conservatives have been bending over backward to rebut an increasingly successful line of attack by Labour that accuses them of being isolationist.

Yesterday in a speech in London the Conservative's shadow foreign secretary William Hague sounded a very different tone than he was just a few months ago. He insisted that the Tories would play a "leading role" in the EU if they were elected to power in May. Calling the EU “an institution of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and its foreign policy,” he said that the Conservatives’ intention was to be active in Brussels, “energetically engaging with our partners.” It was, to say the least, quite an about-face from the barely veiled contempt the Tories have displayed for the EU as they rode higher and higher in the polls over the past two years.

The speech clearly had two intended audiences. One was an increasingly skeptical British public who have begun to doubt whether the Tories have really changed from theconfused and conflicted party they were in the 1990’s. The other audience was fellow European leaders, particularly Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, who have been enraged by the Tories’ behavior over the past two years. To say the least, David Cameron’s outspoken criticism of the Lisbon reform treaty did not go over well on the continent. But it was Cameron’s decision last year to remove the Tories from the pan-European conservative party (EPP) in the European parliament to form a new anti-EU party with hard right Eastern European parties which really provoked the ire of the Tories' centre-reight European counterparts. Merkel’s Christian Democrats have reportedly suspended meetings with the British Conservatives since that decision.

Obama 'snubs' Europe

Given that this is a blog about EU-US issues, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sad, sad tears that are being shed today over Barack Obama’s decision to ditch the planned EU-US summit in Madrid in May.

Spain appears to be livid about it, while papers across Europe seem to be responding not in anger but rather in a rather depressed and humiliated shrug. The White House announced yesterday that Obama would not be attending the planned joint summit, which apparently came as quite a shock to its organisers. Apparently EU officials found out about the decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, through the news media.

Spain, which currently holds the rotating EU ministerial presidency (not to be confused with the newly-created council presidency), is now saying it will postpone the summit until the president can attend. Holding it without him would be humiliating for Europe and would lack symbolic significance.

EU Low Representatives?

The look on Catherine Ashton’s face last night said it all. Shocked, flustered and almost a little embarrassed, the largely unknown British commissioner chosen to be the EU’s first “foreign minister” said it was a sign of her surprise that she had no acceptance speech prepared. Speaking in a softly reassuring tone, she said she would pursue a “quiet diplomacy” - characteristic of her low-profile approach to politics. 

Standing beside her, the expression of the unassuming Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy was equally telling. Constantly switching languages every few minutes, he spoke of his reluctant acceptance of the offer from member state leaders to become the European Council’s first president. Oscillating between English, French and his native Dutch, a portrait emerged of a man who has gained a reputation as a quiet consensus-builder, having rescued the national Belgian government from collapse two years ago. 

And with them on the podium stood a beaming European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, a clear winner from last night’s announcement. In these two very low-profile picks Barroso will not have the competition for leadership he feared from a pick like Tony Blair or Jean-Claude Juncker. Since Rompuy will largely relegate his role to being a secretary-coordinator for the European Council, Barroso will continue to be the EU’s de facto leader. And with the demise of the rotating council presidency, he no longer has the prospect of an upstart national leader stealing the show every once in awhile. 

Together the three of them have been dubbed by bloggers today as the “Troika of Boredom” - three rather unengaging and unambitious politicians who are unlikely to give the EU the respected high profile it had sought to achieve by creating these new positions. Indeed, the reaction from Brussels blogs last night and this morning has been overwhelmingly unimpressed. Many are seeing the choice of two rather weak personalities as a deliberate effort by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy to ensure that there is no strong supranational EU figure that could challenge their authority in the council. 

As for the fourth man standing in the group, his body language made it clear where his institution is headed. Frederik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister of Sweden (which currently holds the rotating council presidency), was practically being edged off the stage. The rotating country leadership will still continue to host meetings for the Council of Ministers, but it will no longer have any symbolic leadership role.

Franco-German Stitch-Up

Though the people selected for these new EU positions are being seen as boring, the selection itself is anything but. In fact, it is incredibly important. The remit of these two positions was left very vague in the text of the Lisbon Treaty, and all along its been said that the presidency would be defined by the first person who holds the job. 

If it were a high-profile person with much political clout, the presidency could become a powerful position capable of speaking with one voice for the EU on the world stage. If it was a low-profile choice, the presidency would become merely a coordinator role, a consensus-builder who would work behind the scenes to get the different leaders of member states to reach agreement. With the selection of Van Rompuy, member state leaders have made a clear decision about which way the presidency should go. His term length may just be two-and-a-half years, but if Rompuy takes a ‘low-profile coordinator’ approach to it as expected, it would be difficult for the next president to fundamentally reshape the precedent the Belgian set. 

But is this really what EU leaders wanted? Gordon Brown may have had his differences with Tony Blair in the past, but he seems to have been legitimately insistent that Blair should get the position. Indeed, it appears the choice of Ashton was made as a compromise to Brown in exchange for his abandoning the Blair cause. Sweden’s foreign minister seemed less than enthusiastic about the choice this morning, and many in Eastern Europe have been voicing grumbling discontent with the decision today. Certainly the Socialist leaders of Spain, Portugal and Greece can’t be pleased about it, considering they got the short end of the stick. Ashton is a fairly moderate politician who has little to no foreign policy experience. 

This will be largely seen as a Franco-German stitch-up. Merkel had indicated her preference for Van Rompuy early on, and after she persuaded Sarkozy to give up his preference for Tony Blair, the two announced they would be presenting a united front in their selection. This provoked accusations of bullying, with Sweden’s prime minister saying the decision should not be made by just the French and Germans. Certainly, it is a sign of Britain’s lack of influence in Europe that even as one of the ‘big three,’ it was unable to fight against a Franco-German alliance.

“Political Pygmies”

Certainly these two new ‘high representative’ positions were not the only part or even the main part of the Lisbon Treaty. Still, they were a significant part. And after eight long years of fighting for it, this decision has many asking, “What was the point?” The intention of the positions was to give someone the authority and clout to represent the EU on the world stage and stand toe-to-toe with the US and China. These two are unlikely to be able to do that, which bounces authority back to Barroso and back to the status quo, with no united voice for Europe. 

Many federalist Europhiles found themselves in the strange position of agreeing with UKIP leader Nigel Farage last night. Bizarrely, he told the BBC, "We've got the appointment of two political pygmies. In terms of a global voice, the European Union will now be much derided by the rest of the world."  But…isn’t that exactly what UKIP wants? The cognitive dissonance is even more impressive than usual on this one. 

For their part, the Tories praised the decision to go with a low-profile person rather than Tony Blair, with shadow foreign secretary William Hague saying, "I am very pleased that those of us across Europe who said that the president should be a chairman, not a chief, have won the argument.” 

Both the Tories and UKIP were also quick to point out that Baroness Ashton has actually never been elected to anything in her life. She spent most of her career working for a charity run by Prince Charles before being appointed as leader of the House of Lords in 2007 by Gordon Brown. When Peter Mandelson left his “Brussels exile” to return to Westminster in 2008, she took his place as EU Commissioner for Trade, where she’s served for about a year. Trade Commissioner is one of the most important roles in the EU and involves a lot of negotiation with foreign trade bodies (particularly those in the US and China). However it doesn’t necessarily involve any areas of foreign policy outside of trade. 

For his part, Van Rompuy is being lauded by his supporters as someone who united the warring Flemish and Frencophone factions of the Belgian parliament and brought the national government back from its year-long long shutdown in 2008. He reportedly took that job reluctantly after being asked by the Belgian king, who pleaded with him for 90 minutes. He had been set for retirement, and had already been on a long hiatus from politics. Merkel and Sarkozy have argued that his skills as a quiet consensus builder make him perfectly suited to coordinate the diverse member states of the EU. 

But it’s unclear whether this skill will translate to a European level. The disagreements in Belgium are between two parties, not 27. And authority in Belgium has been so devolved to the regions of Flanders and Wallonia by this point that the national government barely does anything at all – as evidenced by the fact that it was barely noticeable when the national government shut down for about a year. Is it that impressive that he was able to bring back to function a body that is largely symbolic by this point anyway? The EU may have it’s problems but it is by no means dysfunctional and is not about to shut down.

Realism

Perhaps the consensus reached last night appropriately reflects the fact that many Europeans are not ready for the notion of an “EU President.” The Liberal Democrats in the UK had an interesting interpretation of the decision yesterday, telling the BBC that the decision would expose the stupidity of the Eurosceptic British media referring to the Lisbon Treaty as if it was solely designed to create a powerful EU presidency for Tony Blair. Foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said,

"With low-profile appointees, no-one can take seriously any longer the Eurosceptic deception that these positions would challenge the supremacy of nation states acting together when they agree."

From the perspective of the UK and Scandinavia, where the prospect of an “EU President” was most unpopular, this may be true. But what about the many other Europeans who wanted the EU to speak with a stronger, more coherent voice on the world stage? Who now will have the clout to stand up to the United States in situations like the Iraq War? Who now will bring trade power to bear in negotiations over climate change? The decision to choose low-profile people may allay some of the fears expressed in the British media, but does it do so at the expense of offering a solution to the problem the Lisbon Treaty was trying to solve? 

Time will tell how these two will use their roles, but it looks like the wild card is more likely to be Ashton than Van Rompuy. She is younger, newer, and there is less known about her political stances on foreign policy issues (she by the way has a very left-of-centre husband I understand). Van Rompuy is unlikely to surprise anyone and will probably stick to a low-profile role. But it she wants to, the Baroness could shape the EU's foreign policy positions to be far more powerful than the presidency. 

That is, if she is so inclined.