Hydra-headed leadership takes over the EU

telegraph.co.uk ^ | December 29, 2009

[Tailgunner Joe]

A new-look leadership structure designed to streamline the European Union begins in earnest on Friday when Spain assumes the rotating presidency alongside the bloc's first president, Herman Van Rompuy.

But as Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Van Rompuy and the head of the EU commission José Manuel Barroso jostle for position at the bloc's top table, critics say that the situation is risks becoming more hydra than hybrid. ....

Van Rompuy's position was created under the terms of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which also creates the role of a foreign policy and security supremo, a post that the 27 EU member states bestowed upon Catherine Ashton, a British peer.

While the much-vaunted treaty was supposed in part to answer Henry Kissinger's famous question "who do I call if I want to call Europe," he may find that in fact the EU phone book has just got bigger.

The pre-existing system, whereby an EU nation assumed the rotating presidency for a six-month period, is retained, but not for EU summits and foreign ministers' meetings, when the EU Council president, Van Rompuy, and the foreign policy High Representative, Ashton, will be in the chair. ....

Zapatero has managed to secure several EU summits for his home turf, notably an EU-US summit with Barack Obama as well as meetings with Latin-American nations, the Mediterranean Union and an EU-Morocco summit.

"We have made a gentleman's agreement," said the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos.

"Mr Van Rompuy will preside at the meetings, but Mr Zapatero will be beside him playing a key role. ....

Spain will be offering foreign policy supremo Ashton its expertise over a broad swathe of her remit: the Middle East, Latin America, north Africa and the Mediterranean.