There are two ways of looking at the imminent appointment of Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, as the next president of the European Parliament. The first way is to applaud Europe’s politicians for doing the right thing and giving one of the European Union’s top jobs to a man from one of the 10 former communist countries in central and eastern Europe that joined the EU in 2004-2007. This is the highest honour yet accorded to a public figure from one of the EU’s new member-states. Poles are justifiably proud.
The second way, however, is to be honest and recognise that the job of parliament president is about the lowest-ranking position someone could be given without its looking like an insult. Buzek, who belongs to the legislature’s main centre-right group, won’t even hold the job for the assembly’s full five-year term: under a deal with the socialists, he will step down after two and a half years and hand over the reins to a socialist. The fact is that, by giving this post to Buzek, older and bigger member-states in western Europe are making sure that they will get all the really big jobs when they come up for grabs later this year.
These are the European Commission presidency (already earmarked for Portugal’s José Manuel Barroso, though his reappointment to a second term is running into a few embarrassing difficulties); other top Commission portfolios, such as those covering competition, the internal market and trade; the job of EU foreign policy high representative (shortly to be vacated by Spain’s Javier Solana); and the full-time presidency of the European Council, which represents national governments. The latter job will be created only if the EU’s Lisbon treaty is ratified by all member-states. But assuming that it comes into existence, I will eat mon chapeau if it doesn’t go to a western European.
There is an interesting side story to all this. Buzek’s appointment became a certainty after Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, withdrew his candidate, Mario Mauro. Naturally, Italy wants compensation. Berlusconi would probably be interested in one of the big Commission jobs for Italy, but Franco Frattini, his foreign minister, has other ideas. He would like to replace Solana as EU foreign policy chief.
The reaction in certain other EU member-states to Frattini’s ambitions is, to put it mildly, one of incredulity. No one has forgotten Frattini’s most recent diplomatic coup – a planned visit to Iran in May that went spectacularly wrong. Frattini had to cancel his trip at the last minute when President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad insisted on meeting him in a city where the Iranians had just announced the successful launch of a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel. The visit would in any case have broken the EU’s policy of avoiding high-level contacts with Iran because of its nuclear programme.
So, it’s yes to Buzek – but no, grazie to Frattini.
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