Herman Van Rompuy, the European Union’s first full-time president, is getting down to business. Hitting the ground running? Not exactly. But in various subtle ways the mild-mannered, philosophically inclined former Belgian premier is already making an impact on the way the EU goes about its work.
On Monday, his first official working day, he announced that he was summoning all 27 EU heads of government to Brussels on February 11 for an unscheduled summit on economic policy. This statement didn’t attract much attention, because plans for such a summit were being laid even before Christmas. But the announcement was significant nonetheless. Chairing summits is one of the few duties that the EU’s Lisbon treaty specifically reserves to the full-time president. By calling an unscheduled summit, Van Rompuy was signalling to the world that he intends to use his presidential authority to the full.
Meanwhile, it became clear last month that EU summits will take on a substantially different format under Van Rompuy. Foreign ministers of member-states will, for example, no longer be automatically invited to the regular summits held in Brussels four times a year. It is even possible that Van Rompuy will abolish, or at least radically change, the practice of issuing summit communiqués that run to dozens and dozens of pages and rarely say anything new or interesting.
Van Rompuy is also making a point of travelling around Europe as much as possible to consult with EU heads of government over a range of policy issues. On Wednesday he will be in The Hague for talks with Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch premier. On Friday he will fly down to Madrid to see José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister of Spain, with whom it is crucial that he has a good working relationship, since Spain holds the EU’s rotating presidency for the next six months.
Van Rompuy was active in December, too. At the start of the month he was in Milan, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave him a red-carpet welcome, complete with military honours. Two weeks later, after an assailant fractured Berlusconi’s nose and broke his teeth by throwing a miniature replica of Milan cathedral in his face, Van Rompuy rushed out a statement: “This brutal and pointless attack has shocked us all. I wish him a swift recovery …”
This response indicates that Van Rompuy knows the value of keeping himself in the public eye, however anodyne the statements that he is obliged to let his press office issue in his name. If you go to the homepage of the European Council, the institution that represents EU governments and of which Van Rompuy is now the head, you will find all sorts of goodies such as his personal video blog and a schedule of his weekly appointments.
For his famous haiku, alas, you will have to look elsewhere.
Van Rompuy is 62 years old and has the look of an amiable, slightly dotty professor – the sort who might absent-mindedly pour tea all over the table while he tells you an anecdote about Socrates (the Greek philosopher, not the Brazilian footballer). It would be unfair to pass any judgements at such an early stage. But it is already clear that Van Rompuy has every intention of making his mark.
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