Brussels blog

With a mere 27 members (all European heads of state or government, admittedly), the electorate that will pick the European Union’s first full-time president and new foreign policy high representative is even smaller than the conclave of Roman Catholic cardinals that chooses a new pope.  But this isn’t stopping other European busybodies from trying to muscle in on the decision.

Take the main political groups in the European Parliament, for example.  They have no formal say in the matter whatsoever.  Nonetheless, the parliament’s socialist group appears confident that it has an informal understanding with the centre-right European People’s Party that the full-time EU presidency should go to a EPP politician and the foreign policy post should go to a socialist.

Well, I’m glad that’s all clear, then.  Perhaps Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and the 24 other EU leaders who will actually make the choices shouldn’t bother to show up for tomorrow’s summit in Brussels – or for a follow-up summit in November, when the decisions are likely to be taken.

Still, for what it’s worth, here is the shortlist of six candidates that the socialists are proposing for the EU foreign policy job, currently held by Javier Solana of Spain:

a) Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s outgoing foreign minister, who suffered a crushing defeat in last month’s German elections at the hands of Chancellor Angela Merkel;

b) David Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, who says he isn’t available for the job, not least because his government wants Tony Blair to be the EU’s first president;

c) Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain’s foreign minister since 2004, and a former EU special representative for the Middle East peace process;

d) Elisabeth Guigou, a member of the French parliament who served as France’s EU affairs minister from 1990 to 1993;

e) Alfred Gusenbauer, who was chancellor of Austria for less than two years in 2007-2008 before his term ended, in the words of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, “in fiasco amid infighting, tactical errors and his own over-estimation of himself”;

f) Adrian Severin, a former Romanian foreign minister who, as previously noted in this blog, is the winner of a mysterious “Man of the 20th Century Award”.

There are many reasons why the socialist list is not to to be taken seriously.  I shall mention just two.  First, the German government has already named its next member of the European Commission as Günther Oettinger, prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg.  Because the EU foreign policy chief will automatically be a Commission member, and because each country is entitled to only one Commission seat, it is impossible for Steinmeier to get the foreign policy job.

Secondly, why would a man who has been Man of the 20th Century stoop so low as to take on the menial task of running European foreign policy?