Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso
A campaign has been launched to merge the post of president of the European Commission with the new post of president of the European Council created under the Lisbon treaty. The argument is that the Commission president is more legitimate but the European Council president is more powerful. Power can be made legitimate by merging the posts. Read about it here. I write about it on this blog because I don’t agree with it.
(The title of the campaign, Who do I call?, is also odd. Henry Kissinger, when he posed his famous question, was US secretary of state, and the EU will have a single voice – the High Representative, who both represent the Council and be a member of the Commission – once the Lisbon treaty comes into force.)
Reasons why the idea is not a good one. First, the EU is based on the rule of law. There is a strong argument that such a merger is explicitly ruled out in the Lisbon treaty. Article 9b(2) in the treaty defines the membership of the European Council, listing the two presidents of the European Council and European Commission separately. Furthermore, it is specified that members of the Commission “may not engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not”. That probably kills the idea at the outset.
Secondly, even if the idea is not ruled out by the new treaty, it is certainly not ruled in by it. The idea that the two roles should be filled by the same person was suggested during the European Convention but did not receive general support at that time, and no-one can really say now that this is what the treaty intends. For example, the two posts are appointed differently, they may be dismissed differently, and they even serve different terms of office. (The Commission president has a 5 year renewable term, the European Council president has a 2 1/2 year term, renewable once.) If merger was intended, these points would all be the same.
Let us imagine that, despite these two points, a legal and diplomatic manoeuvre enables the two posts to be merged. Is that how the leadership of the European Union should be settled? By a legal and diplomatic manoeuvre? No, it should be settled in the ballot box. The thought that things can be fixed in Brussels is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
This needs to be said because there is every possibility that the merger of the two posts will have the opposite outcome to that intended. Rather than bestowing on the European Council the legitimacy of the Commission, it might well infect the Commission with the European Council’s distance from the citizen. That would make things worse, not better.
A much better way to make the exercise of political power within the EU more legitimate is to strengthen the connection between the European elections and the choice of president of the Commission. The political parties should nominate candidates in advance of the elections in June 2009. Read more about that here http://www.who-is-your-candidate.eu/
http://www.federalunion.org.uk/europe/fedletter/fl_7.shtml
http://www.federalunion.org.uk/europe/accountablepresident.shtml
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Is this Federal Union’s official position? I suspect not.
I’ve now had time to re-read what you wrote, and it saddens me for a number of reasons.
Firstly I have a problem with the tone of what you write. Even a eurosceptic blog like EU Referendum can manage to find a half-positive line to describe the idea. You can find none. The fact that the 2 people running whodoicall.eu are two people you have known for many years counts for nil. You’re welcome to whatever opinions (as are we) but at least we try to put our opinions across in an up-beat manner. Maybe we’re just not cynical enough.
Secondly, why is the campaign called Who Do I Call? It’s because we needed something that people could relate to in order to get our point across. It gives us an identity. See our FAQ answer about that.
Thirdly, while the disclaimer on this blog states that the opinions expressed are the opinions of the author, you nevertheless need to be careful. You have to click to 2 pages away from the blog to even discover that you (Richard Laming) are the Secretary of Federal Union. Would I – as a member of Federal Union – be entitled to post too?
Fourthly, the arguments themselves.
(A) You know very well that the legal point is far from clear, and that there are opinions both ways. Is chairing 4 meetings a year equivalent to an occupation? Again we have FAQs about it.
(B) You argue that the Treaty does not foresee One President. But it also does not foresee the President of the European Council becoming the President of the EU, which is where the debate is currently about these matters. The Treaty also does not foresee any democratic accountability of the European Council President – are you saying you’re against accountability because it’s not foreseen?
OK, arguing for something that is not explicitly foreseen might not be easy, but the alternative – a powerful president with no democratic legitimacy – is surely worse?
(C) The end of your post is very strange. You say “..a legal and diplomatic manoeuvre enables the two posts to be merged. Is that how the leadership of the European Union should be settled?” Well, no, but the One President would be approved by the European Parliament. The President of the European Council will *in any case* be appointed by a diplomatic manoeuvre. So better some legitimacy for the person with both jobs, than legitimacy for only one of them (and possibly the weaker one).
In my view, it is a good thing that active EU citizens discuss the top jobs.
Different opinions are desirable since debate is the way forward towards better arguments (and ultimately, decisions).
As I see it, the Lisbon Treaty does not exclude a merger of the two posts as president. In other words, the option is there, if agreement is reached to use the opportunity.
I assume that the main European level parties are going to field their candidates for at least Commission president ahead of the 2009 EP elections.
Then, we have the additional question if this candidate should be ready to assume the chairmanship of the European Council.
It might seem far-fetched, until you think about the alternative.
Electing a separate European Council president less openly and transparently than the Pope, should be unthinkable in the 21st century, especially when the European Union professes democracy as its founding value, both in its internal action and externally, as the world’s schoolmaster.
As I wrote on my blog a few moments ago, the EU can not continue to work in the footsteps of the Holy Alliance.
How can the EU continue to criticise ‘managed democracy’ while leaving itself open to its own mirror view?
The consolidation of these 2 positions into one does not bode well for my stomach. There is something fishy about it. There is nothing wrong with the current setup is there so why change it?