The fuss over who will be the European Union’s first full-time president is obscuring the less sexy but potentially more important question of who will get the two or three most powerful jobs in the next European Commission. A good many governments would prefer to see one of their nationals in a truly influential economic policymaking role in the Commission than occupying the EU presidency, which may turn out to be a more hollow job than once foreseen.
Commission president José Manuel Barroso says he will not nominate his new team until EU leaders have chosen their new head of foreign policy, a post that entitles its holder to a Commission seat. Any country wanting a big economic portfolio at the Commission will therefore steer clear of putting forward a candidacy for the foreign policy job, because there is only one Commission seat for each nation.
Does this explain why the German government has proposed Günther Oettinger, prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg, as its next commissioner? He doesn’t have obvious foreign policy credentials, so the German idea is almost certainly to slot him into a top economic job.
Three portfolios in the outgoing Commission - competition commissioner, internal market commissioner and trade commissioner – stand out from the rest, because they bestow real power on their occupants. They are the policy areas where Europe is most effective at speaking with one voice and exerting worldwide influence. It would make sense for Germany, which was disappointed by the performance of its outgoing representative, Günter Verheugen, as industry commissioner, to want one of these jobs.
If the internal market portfolio is rejigged, perhaps in order to put a stronger focus on Europe’s response to the financial crisis, it is easy to imagine a scramble among the bigger EU countries to be put in charge of financial regulation. France is said to be keen on getting something meaty like this (Michel Barnier, or perhaps Christine Lagarde?). Of course, this would rule out the foreign policy position for a Frenchman – but Paris, better than most national capitals, knows which jobs in Brussels contain the beef and which the onions.
What about the UK? The intriguing point here is that it would be extremely simple for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to quash the rumours that David Miliband, his foreign secretary, is manoeuvring to be the EU’s next foreign policy supremo. All Brown would need to do is to announce that Catherine Ashton, the British EU trade commissioner, was being renominated to Barroso’s team. Or Brown could name someone else. Either way, it would instantly rule out Miliband as the head of EU foreign policy.
But Brown hasn’t done that. It is anyone’s guess why. But one explanation is that, with Tony Blair’s undeclared EU presidential bid far from certain of success, Brown needs other cards to play. If Blair is the British government’s queen of hearts, Miliband is, you might say, the knave of spades.
Across the globe: Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on