Tag: Barroso

Coming Up Soon… Mr Barroso’s Man Goes to Washington

February 18, 2010 9:03 am by Tony Barber

Two thoughts spring to mind when you consider the appointment of João Vale de Almeida, a Portuguese Eurocrat, as the European Union’s next ambassador to the US. The first is that the EU seems to be retreating from its experiment of placing a political heavyweight in Washington to speak up for Europe. John Bruton, the EU’s outgoing envoy, is a former Irish prime minister whose face was well-known in the White House and on Capitol Hill when he got the job in 2004.

Vale de Almeida is familiar to certain US officials – he has been the European Commission’s top liaison man for G8 and G20 meetings. But as a civil servant who started his career with the Commission in Lisbon back in 1982, he has never been elected to office, has never served as a government minister and altogether lacks the profile of someone like Bruton. Americans are already struggling to recall which two figures were chosen last year as the EU’s first full-time president and new head of foreign policy. Now they have a third obscure European name to remember.

The second thought is that Almeida’s main qualification for the US post appears to be that he spent five years from 2004 to 2009 as chief of staff for José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, who is also Portuguese. This has profound implications for the way the EU’s new foreign policy structures, as established under the Lisbon treaty, will be seen in Washington.

The treaty foresees that all EU missions abroad will form part of a diplomatic service answerable to Baroness Catherine Ashton, the newly appointed foreign policy high representative for the 27-nation bloc. Given Vale de Almeida’s close ties with Barroso, however, it will be entirely understandable if US policymakers see him as a channel for communicating with the Commission president as much as a servant of Ashton.

This perception is reinforced by the fact that Barroso has engineered Vale de Almeida’s appointment by exploiting his powers as Commission president in the interval before the EU’s diplomatic service is up and running. EU national governments didn’t get much of a say in the matter, either. Once the diplomatic service is operating in earnest, it will be Ashton’s job to choose ambassadors.

True, it can be argued that it was important to put a new envoy in Washington as soon as possible and Vale de Almeida had the right profile as the Commission’s director-general for external relations. But he has only held that job for a couple of months. Vale de Almeida’s appointment sends a signal that institutional rivalries and personal power plays will continue to hinder the formation of a united, more forceful, more coherent EU foreign policy.

Tags: Ashton, Barroso, EU foreign policy, EU-US relations, US relations
Posted in EU Commission, Foreign policy | Permalink

World Restless as EU Struggles with its Lisbon New Look

February 4, 2010 2:36 pm by Tony Barber

Whether it’s climate change, foreign policy or the increasingly alarming fiscal crisis, the European Union’s difficulties can be summed up in one word: disunity. After December 1, when the EU’s Lisbon treaty came into force, disunity was supposed to be a thing of the past. Instead, disunity has proved to be very much a thing of the present. What’s more, the Lisbon treaty may – at least in the short term – be making matters worse.

Take the world conference on climate change at Copenhagen in December. According to Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s incoming climate change commissioner, disunity – in the sense of a cacophony of European voices – was an important factor behind the ability of other powers to brush aside the EU’s views. “Those last hours in Copenhagen, China, India, Japan, Russia and the US each spoke with one voice, while Europe spoke with many different voices. Sometimes we spend so much time agreeing with one another that when finally the EU comes to the international negotiations, we are almost unable to negotiate,” she told her confirmation hearing at the European Parliament last month.

The outcome of the Copenhagen conference hurt the EU, which couldn’t understand why Europe had been ignored when it had such progressive ideas about tackling climate change. Still, on climate change the EU’s 27 countries do at least put on a certain display of unity. They share a common target of a 20 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels. They may even achieve this goal.

There is no such common approach visible in the fiscal emergency unfolding in Greece, Portugal and Spain. This crisis cries out for more vigorous action from the eurogroup, the body that brings together finance ministers from the 16-nation eurozone. For the sake of calming financial markets, it demands clarity from eurozone governments about what they plan to do. Instead, all the markets hear is that eurozone leaders are determined not to involve the International Monetary Fund, but don’t want to give any financial assistance themselves to Greece. From the markets’ point of view, this is not exactly reassuring.

Disunity on foreign policy is just as obvious as it was before the Lisbon treaty came into effect. It was painfully visible this week as a squabble broke out over who was responsible for Barack Obama’s decision not to travel to Spain in May for a US-EU summit. Officials close to Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s full-time president, said it was nothing to do with him. They implied it was the fault of Spain, holder of the EU’s rotating presidency. It does not seem to have occurred to the Europeans that Obama decided not to go because he couldn’t figure out who speaks for Europe – even after the Lisbon treaty - and how the summit would produce practical results in terms of Europe’s contribution on Afghanistan, Iran, Bosnia and so on.

Meanwhile, Spain is also getting flak for floating the idea of lifting the EU’s arms embargo on China.

The fact is, multiple contests for influence are going on inside the EU, some old and some triggered by the Lisbon treaty: i) between the full-time presidency and the rotating presidency; ii) between the rotating presidency and the office of the EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton; iii) between national governments and the European Parliament; iv) between national governments and the European Commission; v) between political groups in the Parliament, a struggle that seeps its poison all over Brussels; and vi) between the Commission and the Parliament.

This last contest needs careful monitoring, because the Parliament is seeking to exploit its enhanced position under the Lisbon treaty to claim obscure but important new rights. José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, has just conceded that the legislature should have the same degree of access as EU governments to documentation on Commission meetings with national experts. He has also agreed that all commissioners, even Lady Ashton, will be grilled at a new “Question Hour” during the assembly’s plenary sessions. And he will seriously consider asking a commissioner to resign if the Parliament asks him to withdraw his confidence in him or her.

The EU’s institutions are in a highly fluid state as a result of the Lisbon treaty. Maybe it will take some time before they begin to acquire a coherent shape. But for the moment, the rest of the world is baffled and a little impatient.

Tags: Ashton, Barroso, Brussels, EU Parliament, Greece, Lisbon Treaty, Spain, US relations, Van Rompuy
Posted in EU, EU Commission, Foreign policy | Permalink

Few whiffs of Bulgarian doo-doo as Barroso forms new Commission

January 20, 2010 9:50 am by Tony Barber

There are some who say the forced withdrawal of Rumiana Jeleva as Bulgaria’s candidate for the European Commission on Tuesday was a blow to Commission president José Manuel Barroso. After all, didn’t Barroso make public a letter in support of Jeleva as late as last Friday, only two working days before she crashed in flames?

I disagree. The truth is, Barroso found himself in a very delicate situation and needed to extract himself from it without humiliating Jeleva, annoying the Bulgarian government and giving more excuses for the European Parliament to delay confirming his new Commission in office. By and large, Barroso has achieved these three objectives. He has handled the whole thing rather well.

Although he will never say it publicly, Barroso was not exactly thrilled when Bulgaria’s centre-right government nominated Jeleva to be the new humanitarian aid and crisis response commissioner. As her confirmation hearing showed last week, she wasn’t up to the job – and, frankly, it wasn’t one of the top Commission posts in the first place.

But he had to accept Jeleva’s nomination because she was, after all, Bulgaria’s foreign minister. Even as European Commission president, you can’t go round saying national foreign ministers are useless and you don’t want them on your team. But in terms of her Commission prospects, Jeleva was toast as soon as her parliamentary hearing had ended.

Barroso must have known that. But his primary goal was not to save Jeleva, it was to secure prompt confirmation of his new Commission. His letter in support of her was a way of letting her down gently and signalling both to the Bulgarian government and to the party political groups in the parliament that he would be open to a different candidate.

Two other points. First, Jeleva was a vice-president, no less, of the centre-right European People’s Party, the parliament’s largest political group. How on earth did she rise so high?

Second, a note on pronunciation and the transliteration of Bulgarian words into English. Jeleva’s name has caused confusion around Europe because the “J” has led some people to assume her name is pronounced “Ye-le-va”. But the “J” in her name is not a German-, Polish- or Croatian-style “J”. On the contrary, her name is pronounced “Zhe-le-va”. The “J” is a French-influenced transliteration from the Bulgarian letter “ж“, which like its Russian equivalent is pronounced “zh” (think of the French name “Jean”, or how French people spell the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s name – “Brejnev”).

If Jeleva were of Russian nationality, English-speakers would spell her name “Zheleva”. Why, then, do English-speakers continue to use the French-based transliteration “j” instead of “zh”? One reason is that Bulgarians themselves for a long time preferred to use “j”, because the use of a different transliteration system from that used for Russian helped to distinguish them from Russians. But, in the interests of dispelling confusion, I am on the side of those who think it’s time to move – in English, at least - to “zh”.

Tags: Balkans, Barroso, Bulgaria, EU Parliament, European People's Party, Jeleva
Posted in EU Commission, EU Parliament | Permalink

EU Leaders Lock Horns Over Costs of Climate Change

December 11, 2009 11:03 am by Tony Barber

The biggest fights at European Union summits are usually about money. It’s no different this time. At their final summit of 2009, the EU’s 27 national leaders have been wrestling in Brussels with the question of what contributions each country should make to a “fast-start” fund to help developing countries address climate change.

It looks as if EU governments will come up with an offer of about €2bn a year – much of it coming from rich countries such as France, Sweden and the UK - for the three-year period of 2010 to 2012. “Anything above €2bn will be an impressive offer,” European Commission president José Manuel Barroso said this morning.

That, of course, is not how many developing countries will see matters. Some will regard a sum of €2bn as pitifully small.

Nevertheless, a EU offer along these lines would represent about one-third of the amount that Yvo de Boer, the top United Nations official for climate change, says is needed from advanced nations to generate immediate action on climate change in developing countries. The rest is supposed to come from the US, Japan and other highly industrialised nations.

Inside the EU, the problem is that some member-states, especially in former communist eastern Europem are significantly less well-off than others. They are reluctant to stump up money for non-EU countries that are classified as “developing” but have millions of affluent citizens. As Barroso put it: “The situation in Bulgaria and Romania is not the same as in Germany and Denmark. We cannot ask EU countries under International Monetary Fund programmes, or with huge deficits, to make very considerable efforts.”

It goes without saying that, if disputes as bitter as this are breaking out over relatively small sums of financial aid, imagine how difficult it will be to persuade the world’s rich countries to part with the far larger amounts that are likely to be necessary in the medium term. The EU estimates that by 2020 developing countries will face annual costs of about €100bn to fight climate change. Not all of that will come from advanced nations, but a fair proportion will have to. And we are likely to see the same battles going on in the EU about who should pay as we are today.

Tags: Barroso, China, climate change, Financial crisis, US relations
Posted in Environment | Permalink

Good news! Medvedev cracks a joke at EU-Russia summit

December 4, 2009 2:13 pm by Tony Barber

There is an amusing and rather revealing story doing the rounds in Brussels about a conversation that took place at last month’s European Union-Russia summit in Stockholm.

In the course of a conversation with European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a mischievous allusion to the EU’s imminent institutional changes, under which Barroso will for the first time deal with a full-time EU president representing the bloc’s 27 governments – Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium’s ex-prime minister.

“I hope your new president will have as good relations with you as my prime minister has with me,” said Medvedev. He followed this up with a sly and knowing glance.

The president was referring, of course, to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, his predecessor, who remains an immensely powerful figure in Russia.

Some EU policymakers detect signs of rivalry between Medvedev and Putin, and – to oversimplify – like to cast the president as the open-minded would-be reformer and the prime minister as the ex-KGB hard nut. And, indeed, Medvedev’s joke could be taken as a hint that his relations with Putin are less than ideal. But perhaps the safest interpretation is just that Medvedev has a good sense of humour – a positive in itself.

Tags: Barroso, Dmitry Medvedev, EU foreign policy, Russia, Vladimir Putin
Posted in EU Commission, Foreign policy | Permalink

Gleeful Sarkozy touches raw British nerves with a rod of fire

December 2, 2009 11:46 am by Tony Barber

The inimitable Nicolas Sarkozy couldn’t resist the temptation to term last week’s allocation of jobs in the new European Commission as a victory for France and a defeat for Britain. In particular, the French president crowed, he had outmanoeuvred the Brits by securing the internal market portfolio, which is responsible for financial regulation, for Michel Barnier, the new French commissioner.

It was certainly a little undiplomatic for Sarkozy to uncork the metaphorical Champagne bottles so soon after the announcement of the new jobs. There are many raw nerves in the British government and in the City of London about how various EU measures in the pipeline may damage the UK’s financial sector. Sarkozy touched every one of those nerves with a rod of fire.

In fact, he went even further by implying that France had more or less gained control of EU farm policies, too, because Dacian Ciolos, the new agriculture commissioner, was a Romanian who had studied in France. The message? Forget serious reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.

The problem with Sarkozy’s enthusiastic outburst was that it reminded everyone, just as the EU’s Lisbon treaty came into effect on December 1, that most if not all of the bloc’s 27 governments still see the EU as an arena for competitive national muscle-flexing as well as co-operation. British Eurosceptic circles responded to the make-up of the new Commission in exactly the same way as Sarkozy – i.e., it was a defeat for the UK. Even pro-EU Brits used a similar interpretative framework, by seeking solace in the fact that Barnier’s department chief would be an experienced UK official supposedly sticking up for British interests.

But Brussels, in my view, does not operate in such a simplistic fashion. The Commission has a deeply ingrained culture of working for the common European interest. It rubs off on most politicians and officials who spend some of their career there.

Barnier will not be a mere puppet of the Elysée, as is suggested by a careful reading of his speeches over the years. Here he is, speaking in 2006: “I do not think we need fear competition between ourselves, it exists everywhere in life… I have never criticised the Americans for being strong, I have always reproached the Europeans and others for being weak.”

Also, it is as well to remember that EU legislation – on the financial industry and other matters – may be drawn up by the Commission, but the final word lies with the Council of Ministers, representing national governments, and the European Parliament. Many of the real political battles are fought in these last two institutions.

I somehow doubt Barnier’s role in shaping EU financial regulation is going to be anything like as decisive as either his supporters hope or his critics fear.

Tags: Barroso, Britain, Brussels, Financial regulation, France, Michel Barnier, Sarkozy
Posted in EU Commission | Permalink

It’s the top economic jobs in Brussels that matter, stupid!

October 29, 2009 2:21 pm by Tony Barber

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.

Tags: Barroso, Britain, Brussels, Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, France, Germany, Gordon Brown, Lisbon Treaty, Michel Barnier, Tony Blair
Posted in EU Commission | Permalink

EU governments hunt for top jobs on European Commission

October 14, 2009 6:23 am by Tony Barber

Ask a minister in a European Union government what post their country hopes to get in the next European Commission, and the response is the same every time – something important to do with the economy. Well, you can’t blame people for not hurrying to step into the shoes of Leonard Orban, the Romanian commissioner for multilingualism.

On the other hand, there aren’t enough top economic jobs for Commission president José Manuel Barroso to satisfy everyone. Truth to tell, the Commission looks too big with 27 members. But that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will stay under the EU’s Lisbon treaty. A guaranteed seat on the Commission seems a simple, visible way of making a country’s citizens feel connected to the EU.

The main four economic portfolios in Barroso’s outgoing Commission have been – in no particular order – competition, the internal market, trade, and economic and monetary affairs. These have been occupied by the Netherlands, Ireland, Britain and Spain respectively. By contrast, France has held two lesser posts (first transport, then justice, freedom and security), and Germany has dropped almost completely out of sight in the post of enterprise and industry.

As Barroso puts together his new team, France and Germany are in the hunt for really big jobs and feel no doubt that they deserve them because of their relatively diminished status in the outgoing Commission. The French and Germans want to play a much more direct role in shaping the EU’s economic and financial policies as the EU struggles to emerge from recession, rewrites its rules on financial regulation and defends its industries in world markets. France is said to desire the internal market job on the Commission, and Germany would like something equally prominent.

All this is causing some nervousness in Britain and a few like-minded countries that the next Commission will be less free market-oriented than its predecessor. In response I would make two points. First, this is the spirit of the age – you can expect nothing less after the recent near-meltdown of the western world’s financial system and the associated regulatory failures.

But secondly, it just does not follow that to give a top economic dossier to France or Germany means that the Commission will be wrenched in the direction of some manically illiberal étatisme and fiendishly pro-Volkswagen industrial policy. To take one excellent example, Pascal Lamy, the Frenchman who served as trade commissioner from 1999 to 2004, was a robust defender of free trade and now is head of the World Trade Organisation. The same would be true if the next French commissioner were someone like Christine Lagarde, who at present is President Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister (she is still a possible choice, some think, even though it looks as if Sarkozy is going for Michel Barnier).

EU commissioners, at their best, are like US Supreme Court justices. When a president picks a judge to sit on America’s highest court, everyone’s first thought is, “Here we go, a blatant political appointment designed to push the Court in a certain ideological direction”. Then, more often than not, the nominee causes a surprise by putting the court’s interests first and acting independently. So it can be at the Commission, where the institutional culture of independence from political pressure is stronger than many on the outside assume.

Tags: Barroso, Britain, Brussels, Christine Lagarde, Financial regulation, France, free trade, Germany, Michel Barnier, Pascal Lamy, Sarkozy
Posted in EU Commission, Trade | Permalink

Soaring debt, not Barroso or Lisbon treaty, is EU’s real challenge

October 5, 2009 11:12 am by Tony Barber

A couple of months ago, some European Union policymakers talked despairingly of how 2009 risked turning out to be “a wasted year”. Now the EU is on a roll. The impasse over José Manuel Barroso’s reappointment as European Commission president was removed last month when the European parliament stopped playing games and renewed his term of office.

And all of a sudden, it looks as if “a decade of deadening debate over the European Union’s institutional shape” – as British foreign secretary David Miliband puts it in today’s FT – will soon come to an end, after Ireland’s referendum on the Lisbon treaty produced a massive majority in favour. It may not be long before the EU has its first full-time president, a new head of foreign policy and a new Commission with a five-year mandate serving under Barroso.

So is all rosy in the European garden? Not quite. The principal problem, as it has been for the past two years, is the financial crisis. Time and time again, as I peek into the future, I find myself disturbed by the terrible condition of Europe’s public finances and the strains that this will put on the eurozone’s unity.

In a newly published report, economists at Barclays Capital look at the evolution of the eurozone’s public debt-to-gross domestic product ratio up to the middle of the next decade. In one scenario, which assumes an annual fiscal adjustment of 2 per cent of GDP, 4 per cent inflation and 3 per cent economic growth, the eurozone’s average debt would be 65 per cent in 2016. That is not bad (though it’s above the 60 per cent threshold set for new entrants into the eurozone).

But just look at the differences between the area’s member-states. The German debt would be 40 per cent of GDP, the Dutch debt 37 per cent, the Finnish debt 12 per cent. But the Greek debt would be 150 per cent, the Irish debt 126 per cent and the Portuguese debt 89 per cent. In footballing terms, this would be like Barcelona and Chelsea playing in the same league as Atromitos Athens and the Tralee Dynamos.

This scenario, by the way, is not Barclays Capital’s “base case”, which is more pessimistic, estimating average eurozone debt at 90 per cent of GDP in 2016. But the same enormous divergence between, say, Germany and Greece is evident: German debt would be 64 per cent, Greek debt 171 per cent.

With such bleak forecasts, it is entirely understandable that German policymakers dislike proposals for issuing common eurozone bonds. But the financial crisis is testing to the limit the eurozone’s ability to conduct a properly co-ordinated fiscal policy. When interest rates start going up again, as they will, this will present a far bigger challenge for the EU than getting Barroso reappointed or passing the Lisbon treaty.

Tags: Barroso, EU fiscal policy, EU public debt, Financial crisis, France, Germany, Ireland, Lisbon Treaty
Posted in EU Commission | Permalink

Dark clouds gather for EU on Lisbon treaty

September 17, 2009 9:53 am by Tony Barber

Now that José Manuel Barroso is safely re-installed as European Commission president for the next five years, it would be tempting to think that – from an institutional point of view, at least – all is well in Brussels. Tempting, but wrong.

Once again, it is our old friend the Lisbon treaty that is the problem. On October 2 Irish voters, who rejected the treaty in a referendum in June 2008, will have the chance to reverse their verdict. Opinion polls indicate that the Yes camp will win this time. But there is an unmistakeable air of nervousness at the European Union’s headquarters that the polls may not be a reliable guide to the eventual outcome.

The fundamental problem is Ireland’s economic collapse over the past 12 months, which has plunged the government’s popularity ratings to unprecedented depths. The public mood is as sour as a pint of stale Guinness. In this climate, anti-Lisbon campaigners are finding some voters receptive to the argument that, since pro-Lisbon politicians ruined the economy, why should they be trusted when they say the treaty is good for Ireland?

But the Irish referendum is not the only cloud on the EU’s horizon. For even if Ireland votes Yes, there remain considerable doubts over when Václav Klaus, the Czech president, will append his signature to the Lisbon treaty, allowing it to take force. Fears are growing in Brussels that Klaus intends to find an excuse to delay signing as long as possible – certainly, until some time in the first half of next year.

The EU will then face its ultimate nightmare – that the Lisbon treaty will not have been ratified by the time that the UK holds its next general election, due by June. The rampantly anti-Lisbon Conservative party is widely expected to win the election, and Tory leaders have made clear that, if Lisbon is unratified when they take power, they will call a referendum on the treaty. All the evidence suggests the British would vote No.

If events take this course, it will poison the atmosphere in the EU and make it even harder than it is now to defend all the good things about the 27-nation bloc, such as the single European market and the successful knitting together of western and eastern Europe. Troubling times, indeed.