THERE WAS a most undignified, horsetrading quality to what we were allowed to see of the choice of the first European Council president and EU “foreign minister” on Thursday. It did the EU no credit. As usual at summits such decisions had to satisfy a host of constituencies: the big political families, the Christian Democrats/EPP and the socialists; the large-state, small-state divide; the gender balance; and then the “anyone-but-Tony-Blair” camp, and, apparently, the eastern “that former communist D’Alema is not acceptable” camp.
In the end the process came up with the two candidates who least offended, perhaps inevitably the least known. The council’s new president, haiku-writing, Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy and the new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Britain’s EU commissioner Catherine Ashton are also clear signals from the leaders that they do not want solo runs from either, and that they want to preserve the EU’s delicate institutional balance. Policy will rest firmly in the hands of leaders and foreign ministers.
That reality is far from the caricature that opponents of the Lisbon Treaty threatened us with. We were, they claimed, creating a monster – an imperial figure who would strut the globe throwing Europe’s weight around, someone who would be recognised in a line-up with Obama, Medvedev and Hu Jintao. Someone who would speak only for the big countries. That job spec, however, had never been the preferred model in Dublin, a reality that perhaps sat uncomfortably with our enthusiastic support for the candidature of Tony Blair.
But all this talk of Europe having a figure whose standing alone would somehow force the world to pay attention – a “stop the traffic” candidate is how some put it – is nonsense. And nonsense generated mainly in the big countries who cannot conceive of their smaller partners producing a “suitable” candidate. The world will listen if a president or high representative genuinely speaks for a united Europe. Rock star or not. Necessity would require it, simply by virtue of the realpolitik of the EU’s weight economically and politically in the world. And the world will continue to ignore a president who is just one of a cacophony of European voices.
The challenge leaders faced on Thursday was not so much the appointment of a celebrity statesman, but to lay the basis for the forging of a political will to act as one. In the past, unity of purpose on foreign policy and international security, has often been the exception rather than the rule. The Lisbon Treaty created the political jobs and infrastructure that make possible a new, coherent, powerful voice. The member states will determine yet whether that potential is realised.
What matters more than star quality is competence. While Mr Van Rompuy comes highly recommended as a skilled power broker and chairman, Ms Ashton’s curriculum vitae is short on both foreign policy and the administrative/bureaucratic skills she will need in building the EU’s new diplomatic service. Whether the Brussels apparatus is now fit for purpose, as promised by Lisbon’s proponents, we have yet to find out.