INCOMING EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has won grudging support for her nomination from the dominant political group in the European Parliament after a hearing in which she put in a largely competent if unspectacular performance.
“There’s a basis for co-operation but still no reason for enthusiasm,” said German Christian Democrat MEP Elmar Broc, a leading member of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) on the foreign affairs committee of the parliament.
Baroness Ashton’s office was created under the Lisbon Treaty to strengthen the EU’s global role. She will simultaneously sit on the European Council, the assembly of EU governments, and on the European Commission, and be a vice-president of the commission.
EPP support for her nomination is pivotal given that she was promoted for the post by the Socialist wing of the parliament. Her three-hour hearing yesterday kicked off a seven-day series of hearings in which 26 commissioners designate go before MEPs.
The stakes are high in the hearings as MEPs can reject the commission outright if it deems any single candidate unsuitable.
“If any one of these commissioners designate commits a serious, serious blunder, then anything can happen,” said German liberal MEP Alexander Graf Lambsdorff.
In a three-hour hearing that was notable for her avoidance of controversy on any of the big issues in international affairs, Baroness Ashton brushed off criticism of her time in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and prompted some surprise by slipping up on a couple of points.
She confessed to a gap in her knowledge when questioned by Italian MEP Mario Mauro from Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party about long-standing suggestions that the EU should be given a seat on the UN Security Council. “You’ve caught me out – well done – on an issue I don’t know about.”
Criticised for her lack of foreign policy experience when appointed, her ignorance of the transatlantic market policy to deepen economic ties between the EU and the US was also remarked on.
Citing the conclusions of the pre-Christmas EU summit in which EU leaders threatened further sanctions against Tehran, she told MEPs that EU states were increasingly likely to confront Iran with “some form” of punishment over its nuclear programme. The world could not allow Iran to continue to prevaricate, she said. “If we don’t have the rules kept to, then we have to take action in some form.”
On the stalled Middle East peace process, she affirmed her commitment to the two-state solution that is at the core of EU policy and said she would review the current situation at meetings today with special envoys Tony Blair and George Mitchell.
MEPs welcomed the fact that Baroness Ashton told the committee she would defer to their oversight of her budget.
However, she was criticised from the liberal wing for allowing the EU’s “neighbourhood” policy, dealing with the union’s relations with countries on its periphery, to come under a separate portfolio.
She insisted that she had no lack of ambition for her new office and said her remit included setting the strategic objectives of the neighbourhood policy, now aligned with the commission’s enlargement portfolio.
But Count Lambsdorff said her budget in the period to 2013 – €3 billion – was dwarfed by the €13 billion allocated to the neighbourhood policy. “That makes her weaker,” he said, adding that it appeared commission chief José Manuel Barroso wanted to maintain control over the neighbourhood budget. However, he said the baroness had clearly “done her homework”.