Posted on 05/11/2008 1:09:38 PM PDT by ScaniaBoy
Behind closed doors, over diplomatic dinners, in the corridors of departments, embassies, ministries and chanceries, Europe’s rulers are playing a “once in a lifetime” game for the future of the European Union. As I have already noted, here and here, this is a power play to which the public is not even a spectator.
Substantial negotiations are underway on the biggest European job carve up package, including Nato, in the EU’s existence. The rules of the game, the players and the running score are known only to a tiny group of EU leaders and their most senior civil servants.
The battle to fill the top jobs, including powerful new posts, such as the EU president, will set Europe’s political agenda for the next decade. It is the complete opposite of democratic politics or an electoral race.
In this contest the candidates do not publicly declare, and the more serious a contender is, the more secret and restricted he will keep his ambition. “Speculation at this stage is pointless. The best you can say is that it may well be a name no one has yet thought of,” one diplomat told the FT.
I return to this (let me know if the record sounds stuck) because there have been some developments since I last covered the implementation of the new Treaty, a process that is gathering pace even while (unelected) Lords linger on Westminster ratification or the rest of us passively await a millionaire's appeal to the (also unelected) judges.
Lisbon may not quite be the old Constitution but in terms of reshaping the EU’s institutions (rather than creating new policy areas) the new Treaty goes well beyond its equally controversial Maastricht forebear. “A lot people are just beginning to realise what they have signed up to,” one of the negotiators working on the new EU constitutional settlement said.
One experienced, well placed EU "official", I shall call him, told me that the shake out that follows the Lisbon Treaty (never mind the irritating and trifling formalities of ratification) was “more profound and far-reaching than anything else in the EU’s 50 year history”.
“It might not be quite Constitutional in the national sense but for us here it is the most important time in our lives,” he said. “There has never been such a constellation of jobs and institutional changes aligned at the same moment. A lot of people are talking about a new epoch.”
As you have read here before, an EU summit on June 19 will be the first formal gathering of all Europe’s heads of state and government to discuss the issues. The timing is careful because it will come one week after the Irish vote in the EU’s only referendum on the Treaty. As one EU negotiator put it: “There will be no other expressions of popular prejudice to distract or to get in the way ”.
Current plans assume that an Irish Yes vote will remove the last obstacle to the new EU Treaty. Below I try and set out the deal as it seems to be emerging, based on a number of background briefings from national leaders, ministers, European Commission officials, diplomats, inter-institutional negotiators and Euro-MPs.
The deal will range well beyond the Treaty’s January 1 2009 D-day, when it enters into force, to pre-empt European elections in June 2009, a new Commission (a President and 27 Commissioners) in November 2009 and the appointment of a new Nato Secretary-General, in late 2009. Predictions over who will get what job are hazardous, as Mark Mardell observes.
Woven into the package will also be an agreement on a five year political work programme (whether this will be a public document is unknown) – an agenda to run independently of the vagaries of national elections, one presumes.
There are no manifestoes in this undemocratic dance. There are no alternatives on offer (for us). The best we, the public, can expect (only after Game, Set and Match is declared) is a series of bland and uninformative euro-communiqués in December, followed by others in Spring, October and November 2009.
E-Who? The hidden wiring
President of the Council
There is an intense struggle, see here, raging over the terms and conditions of the “EU President”. To a certain extent the personality chosen will reflect how this battle has been resolved or the direction it is going in. One person involved in the talks said: “Whoever it is, he will need to spend plenty of time throwing cocktail parties and he will need a palace or a cook or two”.
According to a briefing out of the Elysée last week, Tony Blair’s candidacy has been “burned” with “insufficient” support from the centre-left. This could be code that Mr Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, has been less than enthusiastic. Or it could mean that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have agreed on someone else. Mr Blair’s candidacy horrified some, who saw it as damaging to the EU’s traditional “supranational” institutions, the Commission especially.
Paris has recently talked up Jean-Claude Juncker, Germany has smiled on him too. But Luxembourg’s leader is a dyed in the wool Federalist of the old school. He is likely to be opposed (in any top EU job) by the UK. Any candidate that does not have the support of France, Germany and Britain is highly unlikely to make it.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s leader, could be a popular choice, especially if he wins a national referendum on Danish EU opt-outs. He denies he is in the running. Paris has briefed that he wants to head up Nato, not the EU.
UK diplomats stress that at the June summit, “they will look around the table first and then look outside”. In other words, the real candidate may as yet be unknown. Or to put it another way, the choice of who will hold the office of EU President is not for us the public but our betters.
President of the European Commission
This job falls vacant next November, the consensus seems to be that José Manual Barroso will take it for a second term. There has been some speculation that the former Portuguese PM (an expert at jumping ship at the opportune moment) could go to the EU President job. Officials close to Mr Barroso play this scenario down as it would damage the Commission if he chose the other job. If Mr Barroso does switch over it will leave a bad taste and might be the writing on the wall for the Commission in the post-Lisbon institutional landscape.
Mr Juncker is also seen as a possible Commission chief. But the UK has previously blocked candidates the last two times around (Jean-Luc Dehaene and Guy Verhofstadt) because, like Mr Juncker, they were too Federalist.
President of the European Parliament
Those looking for evidence that euro elections are a pretty cynical, pointless exercise need look no further. The deal on the Parliament’s next President seems to have been stitched up a whole year before the European elections next June.
The Parliament’s two big groups the EPP (centre-right, with Conservatives affiliated) and the PSE (centre-left with Labour affiliated) will, as tradition dictates, divide the job into two. Jerzy Busek, a former Polish PM, will take it from autumn 2009. Then in early 2012, the German Socialist Martin Schulz will take over. This deal, if done, helps cement Poland behind the wider carve-up.
Sources close to the present incumbent, Hans-Gert Pöttering, suggest the centre-right Euro-MP, who is politically close to Miss Merkel, wants the job as Germany’s next Commissioner.
Nato Secretary General
EU security and defence policy will be beefed up in 2009 as France (if it goes ahead as planned) rejoins the Western Alliance’s military command. It is a clear sign that the EU and Nato are moving closer together that the Alliance job is part of the deal.
The French might bring forward Treaty plans for increased European defence cooperation. Probably involving Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Poland and Italy (possibly with Hungary and Lithuania too), the new structured “European army” will be organised around euro-style convergence criteria such as defence spending.
Germany has ambitions here.
This is all very hush hush until Ireland’s vote on June 12, because earlier moves to EU military cooperation in the Nice Treaty were blamed for a Irish referendum defeat in June 2001.
EU “foreign minister”, now called the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Some see Javier Solana staying on in the job for 10 months, until a new Commission in November 2009. But France is opposed.
The High Rep will also be a Commission-Vice President so his appointment will be a key part of the power balance in Brussels.
Parliament sources have briefed that Mr Blair is up for the job, after his stint as envoy in the Middle East. But it seems unlikely that Mr Blair would take a job where he would second fiddle to both the EU President and Commission chief. The post seems set to go to someone from the centre-left. It could be a Frenchman like Bernard Kouchner.
European External Action Service
The creation of this service, read more here, has triggered a huge turf war. The outcome will shape the powers of the EU President, Commission chief and High Rep.
The European Commission is set to lose three departments (RELEX, 677 senior staff, ECHO, 162 staff and AIDCO, 585 staff). There is pressure to take two more departments away as well, Enlargement (239 senior staff) and Trade (438 staff).
The existing Council Secretariat, under the eurocrat’s eurocrat Pierre de Boissieu (his job will be part of the bunfight), will contribute up to 400 staff. These could come from some of the most sensitive, secretive parts of the EU’s security structure, such as SitCen.
European Commission
The EU executive’s plum policy portfolios will all be part of “corralling” agreement on an overall package. Formal announcements of the people to be the next 27 Commissioners will be left until October next year but policy jobs will be part of the secret small print in December this year.
This is nothing but a coup d'état, and I don't think it can be stopped non-violently unless there is a sudden economic crash and several countries leave the eurozone.
The EU has given bureaucracy a new meaning.
This is also a glimpse at how a world government will operate.
Stockpile weapons while you can.
I couldn’t agree with you more: this is a coup d’etat staged by bureaucrats, rather than colonels. The nations of Europe are no longer functioning democracies. It is truly a time when the United States stands alone. Our liberties will come under assault in the next few years by these purveyors of “enlightened” despotism. It’s time to pull the plug on NATO and let the Europeans fend for themselves.
If that were to happen, the EU would just pull a Serbia and bring them into line. Afterall, Maastrich was modified so the military could go on the offensive. Hillary or Hussein would be happy to assist against European dissenters.
yitbos
It is hard to believe the Europeans are so willing to give up their sovereignty so easily.
That is until I recalled how most of them opened their arms to Nazi Germany.
Ben, I watch folks laugh at Europe and wonder why they can’t see that this is precisely where we are headed.
We’re headed for some terrible times IMO.
Ping!
They are infected through and through with the tendency toward surrender. The population is aging, few children are being born. Without a stake in the future, many will feel the best course is just to go about one’s little life and try not to worry about what Brussels is doing.
Although, yes, we did determine to liberate Europe in the last world wars—”pull their chestnuts out of the fire,” as had been said before-—of course we acted because it was in our best national interest to do so.
At some point, we realized the threat was real and growing and it was better to stop it “over there.”
Today one has to ask whether we would ever be in that position again. Our military is so advanced now that we could sit by while quite a bit of shenanigans went on in Europe and it would not become a threat to us. What would prompt us to do a WWII-style rescue of Europe this time? Their economic contribution to the global economy? Their security contribution? Some threat to us posed by a civil-warring Europe?
The point is that there is a much, much greater margin of tolerance, I think, presently, and Europe could become really bad off before that situation even began to threaten our national interests (assuming the Middle East does not become involved early on). Therefore, the likelihood of us rescuing them from a bureaucratic coup-—*or its cascading ramifications in the follow-on years and decades*-—is very low.
The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and followed by a Declaration of War from Germany?
a sad end to some great cultures
makes one wonder if all the American lives given to give the Eurpeans the good life was all for naught.
Yes, that would probably do it!
GLOBALISM PING
And all from a simple little trade agreement on coal. Sounded so harmless at the time...
At least they’re falling in line with the rest of the One-Worlders.
http://www.ecfr.eu/content/entry/about/
Is that true? was there a declaration of war from Iran (not including the defacto declaration of war from Iran by them supplying weapons to our enemies in Iraq)??
Just reading the description of who is involved is enough to panic you. Journalists? Professors? Good Lord, it’s shocking to think what would happen if we placed our media and professors in a position of power.
Europe is lost. Honestly, I don’t see how it could survive this.
Thanks for the link, I think. Perhaps ignorant bliss would sometimes be better.
This is coming to the U.S. You just know it.
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