Day one of the EU heads of government summit may have broken up after 1 a.m., but European officials were already up early Friday to conduct their regular post-mortem of the drawn out fight from the night before.
At a breakfast with reporters, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said that too much attention had been paid to the dust-up over the demand by German chancellor Angela Merkel to reopen the EU’s treaties in order to insert new language aimed at preventing another Greek-style crisis.
Mr Barroso noted that the EU leaders unanimously endorsed a set of new budget rules – the product of months of sometimes contentious negotiations – that would enable the EU to fine member states who regularly violate eurozone debt norms.
The backing was expected after finance ministers endorsed the plan earlier this month, but still, Mr Barroso argued, it amounted to a significant change in the way European economies will be governed in the future.
“Let’s not, because of the controversy regarding the revision of the treaty, forget about what we have been in fact doing, and been successful,” he said, sitting around a long table on the 13th floor of the Commission’s headquarters. “We are good at creating new difficulties where we have solved past ones.”
Still, the fight over the treaty change inside the summit room was wrenching, according to European officials. Several said support for even the narrow reopening that Germany pulled out of the hat as night turned into day was fiercely resisted.
“The point was how to reconcile this German request to what was in fact the mood, which was no enthusiasm at all for any kind of treaty change,” said a senior European official. “It’s not a secret that most of the member states – if not all of the other member states – were not enthusiastic about the treaty change.”
The resistance led to copious amounts of horse trading. David Cameron, the British prime minister, was able to trade his support for German backing for a firm statement on keeping the EU’s budget under control.
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk forced a drawn-out debate about whether pension reforms being undertaken at the EU’s insistence should be included when measuring a country’s debt levels. Mr Tusk came away with some language in the final communiqué saying EU leaders would look into the matter, but officials said the Poles may try to get even stronger commitments on Friday.
For his part, Mr Barroso would only acknowledge that there had been “a very intense discussion and a very lively debate” about the treaty change issue. Lively indeed.
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