HENRY Kissinger once famously asked: “If I want to speak to Europe, who do I call?” Europe is trying to come up with an answer: a full-time president . But like many things to do with the European Union (EU), choosing the right person is turning into a tortuous process, which says much about its weaknesses and very little about its strengths.
The top candidate for this brand new position, at least until this weekend, was Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, now a consultant on the international affairs circuit, but looking for something serious to do. He is a very curious choice: deeply unpopular in his own country, famous for committing troops to support George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq in defiance of most of the rest of the EU, the man who failed to get Britain into the euro, and so on. One wonders how he got on the list in the first place.
But this is why the EU is such a strange animal. First , the president will be appointed, not by popular vote, but by European leaders in a smoke-filled room. Democracy is not the EU’s strong card. This makes the process subject to the whims and fancies of 27 member countries, and Blair may just turn out to be the lowest common denominator.
Second , he comes from one of the Big Four (the UK, France, Germany and Italy) who want to be sure that the new president speaks for them.
Third, the EU wants someone who will “stop traffic” when he visits foreign capitals: that is, an international celebrity. Blair is certainly that.
But the Blair bandwagon ground to a halt this weekend because of something that happened in the smoke-filled room on Friday evening. We have not been told officially what, but we can guess.
Blair’s general unpopularity must finally have registered. Does Europe really want as its figurehead a man with a bad political record, moreover one from a country as profoundly anti-EU as the UK? The UK’s opposition Conservatives, who are certain to win next year’s general election, have been warning other EU countries not to vote for Blair because Britain would find it difficult to work with him.
Another reason is probably a revolt by the small nations who are fed-up with being told what to do by the Big Four. The latest word from the back room is that the vote may go to a small country leader. The five new names being touted are political figures from Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden, all largely unknown outside Europe. None of them would stop traffic — but now we are being told that the presidency is not so important after all: it’s more a chairman than a president.
You may be getting a sense of why ordinary people in Europe are becoming bewildered, if not a little cynical about this grand new position, and its Vatican- like election process. Is it important or not, and why are the voters being denied a say in who travels the world as their representative ? The only clear answer to both these questions is that the presidency will be whatever suits the people in the smoke-filled room .
This charade is a sad reflection on an institution which is desperately trying to make itself relevant, not just to its own people, but on the world stage. How much legitimacy will an EU president have without the backing of a popular vote, and how clearly will he be able to articulate the position of 27 countries with sharply conflicting views on many key issues? Probably rather little.
But this is also the EU’s dilemma. It is ineffective politically because it is fundamentally undemocratic. Few of its members are prepared to make it more democratic because that would mean transferring too much power from their own parliaments to the centre. So it is hamstrung.
The full-time presidency, and the new position of EU “foreign minister” that will be created alongside it, are steps in the direction of unifying policy-making and giving the EU a clearer identity. But until these positions are made accountable to the people of Europe, they will carry little importance and less power, and it is hard to see the rest of the world taking them very seriously.
Lascelles is senior fellow of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation in London, and a former banking editor of the Financial Times.