Who will be president of Europe? Not Tony Blair

Jostling for position
Oct 30th 2009 | BRUSSELS
From Economist.com
Reuters
TONY BLAIR’S long career as a political chameleon caught up with him on Thursday October 29th, as European Socialist bosses helped to block his bid to become the first full-time president of the European Union, describing him as an unwelcome vestige of the “Bush and Iraq” era. As leader of the Labour Party Mr Blair won three general elections in Britain but served as a centrist who pursued a close alliance with George Bush. That Faustian pact was called in by his nominal allies from the European centre-left, who made clear in a tense meeting before an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels that they would not back him.

The new president’s job involves chairing summits of the 27 national leaders of the EU, and representing them in meetings with other world leaders. The post will be created by the Lisbon treaty, which is now inching towards ratification. At the summit Europe’s leaders offered a written reassurance to the Czech Republic—the only country that has not yet signed the treaty—that nothing in Lisbon can lead to fresh property claims by ethnic Germans whose descendants were expelled from Czechoslovakia after the second world war. The fiercely Eurosceptic Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, has given what senior officials call a “political guarantee” that he will drop his opposition to Lisbon and sign the document, shortly after the Czech constitutional court gives it a green light at a hearing set for November 3rd.

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, offered support for his predecessor, Mr Blair, at one point reportedly telling a pre-summit meeting of European Socialist bosses: “You need to get real—this is a unique opportunity to get a strong progressive politician to be president of the council.” But Europe’s serving Socialist heads, including leaders from Spain and Austria, instead will put their efforts towards securing the other top post created by Lisbon, a new foreign-policy chief, or high representative, who will enjoy a big budget and thousands of staff.

Mr Blair’s fate was sealed when he lost the support of his one-time chief cheerleader, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. His aides let it be known that Britain’s semi-detached status from the EU, as a country that does not use the single currency, is not a member of the border-free Schengen zone and has opt-outs from several EU policy areas, was “not an advantage”. Diplomats said that Mr Sarkozy was moving to align himself with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. The two leaders discussed the new presidential post at a dinner at the Elysée palace in Paris on Wednesday. Mrs Merkel is said to have argued that the post should go to a candidate from Europe’s main centre-right EPP grouping, whose parties are running most EU national governments.

Mr Blair was also victim to a dispute about the nature of the job: whether it should go to a global star on first name terms with world leaders, or to a more modest “chairman” figure who would not overshadow national bosses. Britain’s opposition Conservative Party opposed Mr Blair’s candidacy, with its leader, David Cameron, saying that he strongly favoured a “chairmanic” figure.

Yet if Mr Cameron thought that a modest council president would lead to a more modest EU, he was mistaken. The European Council is the bit of the EU machine that represents an “intergovernmental” vision of Europe. Those EU leaders who cheered Mr Blair’s failed candidacy also made it clear that they saw his defeat as a big win for a more federalist vision of Europe, in which national governments are no more important than the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Attention is now turning to modest government leaders from the centre-right, with a bias towards small countries. Federalists dream of Jean-Claude Juncker, a chain-smoking master of EU wheeler-dealing who loathes the British (it is mutual). Other unthreatening names in circulation include the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Belgium, and that of Mary Robinson, the former Irish president. EU contests habitually throw up surprises, however. Dark-horse candidates could conceivably include Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister, or José Luis Zapatero, the Spanish one.

It is also lethal to be a favourite in EU horse-races. That makes life tricky for the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, seen in Brussels as a front-runner for the post of high representative, despite his denials of interest. Some argue that it is vital to appoint a woman to one of the two new Lisbon posts. A special summit to choose names could be called as soon as November 12th.

Apart from manoeuvring over jobs, the Brussels summit saw tense discussions over how much the EU should offer to poorer countries to help them tackle climate change, ahead of a summit on global warming in Copenhagen in December. Germany led a group of countries reluctant to put figures on the table until the position of America or China are clearer. Britain, Denmark, Sweden and the European Commission argued that Europe needs to maintain leadership on climate change. A senior EU official said that because America was unlikely to come to Copenhagen with binding promises to cut carbon emissions, it would probably offer money for poor countries instead. If Europe was not putting up its own money, it would lose its “advantage” over America in terms of support from developing countries.