Back in 1970 or so, there was a children’s Saturday morning TV show called “The Banana Splits”, in which some ludicrous character or other would frantically splutter “Hold the bus!” - always too late, for the bus would proceed on its way regardless.  It is an irresistible temptation to compare the four Banana Splits of 40 years ago - Bingo, Fleegle, Drooper and Snorky - with certain members of today’s European Parliament.

For while the legislators are busy spluttering “Stop Barroso!”, they are saying it much too late.  José Manuel Barroso is proceeding on his way to reappointment as European Commission president.  In fact, the entire episode threatens to show the European Union in the worst possible light, after EU-wide elections to the European Parliament that, with their record low turnout, were themselves not exactly a ringing endorsement of the way the EU conducts its business.

Barroso is the only declared candidate for the Commission presidency, and he has the support of national political leaders across the political spectrum - centre-right, centre and centre-left.  True, he is not seen as the most inspiring or visionary of Commission presidents.  But that is, in a sense, exactly the quality that many national leaders are looking for - and the job is in their gift, subject to the parliament’s approval.

If socialist, liberal or Green politicians in the European Parliament wanted to prevent Barroso from getting a second term, they should have fought this battle before the elections to the assembly.  Each should have rallied behind a candidate of their choice.  But they did not.  The socialists were too divided even to come up with a candidate of their own.  The opportunity was lost.  It was their own fault.

Now the socialists and Greens have the nerve to suggest that the EU’s national leaders would in some way be guilty of treating the parliament with disdain, if they were to nominate Barroso at the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday and then pass on his name to the parliament for approval.  But in truth, this is precisely the procedure set out under EU rules.

All that the average European citizen cares about is having a Commission president in office who gets on with his job.  Squabbling and muscle-flexing among European Parliament politicians who, like the Banana Splits, have missed the bus is not of the slightest interest to anyone - except perhaps the EU’s critics, who will gleefully point out that the newly elected legislators appear to have learnt no lessons whatsoever from the recent election campaign.

José Manuel Barroso is all but certain to be reappointed as European Commission president.  But who will get the other plum European Union jobs that will soon be up for grabs?

The most startling suggestion I have heard in recent days - and it came from a high-ranking EU diplomat - is that the EU’s first ever full-time president could be none other than Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK.  The thinking here is that, because the job will require its holder to represent the EU on the world stage, it would suit Brown well.  He has oodles of experience and excellent connections at the highest level, starting with President Barack Obama.

Of course, Brown may have other career plans, such as winning the next British general election and stabilising the British economy.  But if for some unimaginable reason these plans didn’t work out, might there be life after political death for him in Brussels?

It has always been accepted that the EU’s first president - who will serve a two-and-a-half-year term, renewable once - must be a sitting or former prime minister.  But beyond that, the EU’s Lisbon treaty fails to say a great deal about what qualities he or she ought to have.  The president will prepare and chair the EU’s regular summits of national leaders, a role which indicates that he or she will have to be a conciliator and a honest broker, not a temperamental or divisive figure.

He or she will also need to have a good working relationship with Barroso.  But the president must not be an obscure, low-profile politico, because then leaders such as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia will make mincemeat of him or her.  And the Lisbon treaty says nothing about whether the president must come from a eurozone country, rather than a non-euro area state such as the UK.

Tony Blair’s name has been mentioned numerous times in connection with the EU presidency job.  But there has always been the nagging feeling in Brussels that his candidacy would be blocked by a country nursing a grudge against him (such as Belgium).  At the same time, quite a few policymakers recognise that the scale of the security and economic challenges facing the EU is such that the first president needs to be a person of true international stature.

Angela Merkel or Nicolas Sarkozy, the German chancellor and French president, would fit the bill, but neither is remotely interested.  It would be nice to think of an Italian in the job, but something tells me that the EU isn’t about to entrust its fate to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.  That leaves the UK - and the clergyman’s son from Glasgow.

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Never mind the recession, what about the après-crise?  Hope springs eternal in the human breast, wrote Alexander Pope.  And so it is that fashionable Europeans are devoting their thoughts not to the mundane matter of extracting their continent from the worst economic crisis in four generations, but to the altogether more interesting question of how to enjoy the post-recession future. Continue reading "Ring out the recession, ring in the après-crise"

Across Europe, politicians of various political stripes are stamping their feet in impotent fury. José Manuel Barroso, the centre-right Portuguese leader who has served as European Commission president since 2004, seems strongly placed to secure a second five-year term. His enemies and critics would love to stop him, but all they can do is boo from the sidelines like disappointed children.

Barroso’s adversaries, especially on the left, have only themselves to blame. If they wanted to torpedo his reappointment, they should have put forward a candidate for Commission president in next month’s European Parliament elections. But petty rivalries, unseemly personal ambitions and a good deal of incoherent political tactics put paid to that. By contrast, Europe’s centre-right parties rallied behind Barroso, even if some supporters held their noses when they agreed to back him.

The task of appointing a Commission president lies with the leaders of the European Union’s 27 national governments, who, when they make their choice, are supposed to take account of the results of the latest European Parliament elections. Barroso has been busy hoovering up support over the past two years from heads of state and government such as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy (centre-right), Germany’s Angela Merkel (centre-right), the UK’s Gordon Brown (centre-left), Spain’s José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (centre-left) and quite a few others.

It’s true that some heavyweights in the pro-Barroso camp, when pressed, don’t sound especially passionate about his abilities or his record at the Commission. But when EU leaders gather in Brussels for a post-election summit next month, it is hard to see how any name other than Barroso’s will win approval. Though he has come under fire for his inadequate crisis management last September and October during the near-meltdown of Europe’s financial system, the simple truth is that, on the whole, he hasn’t caused much offence to anybody.

Except, of course, a large number of leftists, centrists, Greens and others who sit in the European Parliament. Belatedly, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Franco-German Greens co-president, has appealed this week for a socialist-Green alliance, with others welcome to join, that would be big enough to deter EU leaders from nodding through Barroso’s reappointment.

But still the question remains: Who would the socialists prefer to run the Commission? I am in the dark - but I get the impression there’d be little point asking Martin Schulz, the German leader of the parliament’s socialist group. He simply won’t be drawn on the matter. Whether that’s because he has his eye on becoming Germany’s next member of the Commission, replacing Günter Verheugen, only time will tell.

Who will be the next European Commission president? Until recently, José Manuel Barroso looked comfortably placed to secure reappointment for a second five-year term at a summit of EU leaders in June. Now the picture is not so clear.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy put the cat among the pigeons on Sunday when he refused to reaffirm the support for Barroso’s candidacy that he had offered during France’s spell last year in the European Union’s rotating presidency. “I like Mr Barroso a lot, I’ve enjoyed working with him, I have confidence in him,” Sarkozy said, his words sounding ever more hollow the longer his sentence stretched on.

Sarkozy suggested it might be best to wait until Ireland has held its second referendum on the EU’s Lisbon treaty - perhaps in October - before choosing the next Commission president. For the pro-Barroso camp, this proposal was out of order. EU leaders had decided at a summit last December that they would select the next Commission chief in June.  If every leader went round disregarding things that have already been agreed, where would the EU be?

It’s doubtful that such arguments cut much ice with Sarkozy. His eyes are fixed on June’s European Parliament elections. His socialist and centrist opponents will try to paint him as being in the same “neo-liberal” economic policy camp as Barroso. It’s quite hilarious, really. Viewed from Brussels, Sarkozy looks nothing like a neo-liberal, but rather like a classic French dirigiste.

Be that as it may, Sarkozy doesn’t want to be identified with an economic philosophy that is seen in France as having brought the world economy to its knees. For French electoral purposes, this philosophy is symbolised by Barroso.

Almost certainly, however, there is another reason for Sarkozy’s doubts about Barroso. The French president thinks the world economic turmoil is an epoch-changing event, one that will bury a certain type of capitalism forever, and one that demands the most creative thinking and vigorous action possible in response. He thinks Barroso and the European Commission in general are missing the point and are haplessly fighting yesterday’s battles.

Perhaps Sarkozy has a point. But if so, which European politician does he think has got the vision, dynamism and courage to do the job? Or would he, in fact, prefer a tame Commission president, who meekly took instructions from a certain visionary, dynamic and courageous leader in the Elysée Palace?

According to a combination of 19 national opinion polls, the winner of the June 2009 European Parliament elections will be the centre-right European People’s Party, which is projected to pick up 265 of the 736 available seats. The Socialists are predicted to win 195 seats and the liberals 95, with the rest divided among the far left, Greens and rightwing nationalists.

The centre-right is therefore on track to remain the parliament’s largest force, an outcome that would boost José Manuel Barroso’s chances of reappointment as European Commission president.

http://julienfrisch.blogspot.com/2009/02/european-parliament-elections-2009-55.html

José Manuel Barroso’s campaign for a second term as European Commission president is coming along nicely. Last week he secured a public endorsement for the first time from Gordon Brown, the UK premier.

Of course, it’s hardly a campaign in the normal democratic sense. European voters aren’t directly involved. The vast majority probably has no idea what’s going on. The selection of the Commission president, one of Europe’s most powerful jobs, rests with the 27 leaders of the European Union’s member-states.

This is an electorate so small that it rivals those obscure English university clubs whose members are said to launch ritual attacks on foxes with champagne bottles. Even the body that chooses the pope, which is drawn from the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals, is at present more than four times bigger, with almost 120 cardinals aged under 80 and eligible to vote.

Still, this is the way Europe operates, it’s written into the EU’s rules, and very few leaders seem inclined to change it. You can’t blame Barroso for working the system as he finds it.

And there can be no doubt that he is working it very cleverly. Brown likes Barroso not only for his liberal economic instincts, but because he thinks the centre-right former Portuguese prime minister would strike up a good relationship with President Barack Obama - an important consideration for Europe in the early months of the new US administration.

With Brown in the bag, you may ask, how can Barroso fail to get a second five-year term? For Barroso already has the public backing of centre-right heavyweights such as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. Other centre-right leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s long-serving prime minister, have also signalled their support, as has Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament.

On the left, meanwhile, Portugal’s José Sócrates and Spain’s José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero are behind Barroso. So, too, is Matti Vanhanen, Finland’s centrist prime minister.

Doubtless this explains why Martin Schultz, the German leader of the European Parliament’s socialist group, says of Barroso: “In terms of his politics, he is a very vague person. One day he is left-wing, the other he is liberal, the next he is conservative. We want a socialist at the head of the Commission, but unfortunately it is the European Council [of national leaders] that nominates.”

But perhaps European public opinion may exert some influence on the process, after all. The European Parliament is up for re-election in June, and if centre-left and liberal parties across Europe were to inflict a heavy defeat on the centre-right - at present, the largest group in the legislature - then it is conceivable that pressure would grow to replace Barroso with a nominee from the political family that had triumphed at the polls.

After all, the man or woman picked by EU national leaders as Commission president must still win approval from the European Parliament in a vote of confidence. And EU leaders are anxious to settle the matter of who should run the Commission as quickly as possible - in other words, at a summit scheduled for June 18-19. If the left had just scored a big election victory, the legislature might not be in the mood to offer a tame endorsement of Barroso’s re-nomination.

Knowing how the EU works, however, one can imagine a more likely scenario: a compromise under which Barroso is re-appointed, but he agrees, when putting together his new Commission, to give it a political balance that reflects the European Parliament election results.

It’s not exactly democracy as practised in the recent US presidential election campaign, primaries and all. But it’s very, very European.