Six things we learnt from the European Council

Tim King and Toby Vogel give their thoughts on the national leaders’ inability to come to a decision on the EU’s top jobs.

1) Federica Mogherini is a lost cause – Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, is a man in a hurry. He plucked Federica Mogherini out of obscurity in February, when he made her foreign minister. Just four months later, he wanted to make her European Union foreign-policy chief.

Not so fast, said at least ten leaders, albeit initially in private: Mogherini lacks the experience and the gravitas for the job, and she is soft on Russia.

Mogherini did herself no favours by picking Moscow as the destination of one of her first trips abroad after Italy had taken over the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers on 1 July. She went to Kiev on 7-8 July and to Moscow on 9 July. A photo-opportunity with President Vladimir Putin was a strange form of job application while the Ukraine crisis rumbles on.

An invitation to Putin to join a Europe-Asia summit in Milan in October added to the irritation, and deepened the impression that she lacked diplomatic experience. On the eve of the special European Council that Renzi thought would appoint Mogherini, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president-elect of the European Commission, stabbed her in the back by telling a plenary session of the Parliament that the next foreign-policy chief should be “a strong and experienced player”. Juncker’s opinion mattered because the post also entails being part of his Commission.

It is hard to see how the Mogherini candidacy can be salvaged. Renzi’s influence will weaken, not strengthen (see below). Poland and the Baltic states are not about to learn to love Putin. Mogherini will probably limp along as a diminished foreign minister of a country that is not a serious foreign-policy player on the European scene.

2) The Party of European Socialists is cack-handed when it comes to EU appointments.

OK, so we knew this already. In 2009 Werner Faymann, now the Austrian chancellor, led a PES team that would put together candidates for the top EU jobs. In the event, by default, once the centre-right had decided that it would take the presidencies of the European Commission and the European Council, the PES was left to find a high representative for foreign and security policy and then allocated the prize to the United Kingdom. David Miliband would not be tempted, so a bunch of second-rank Labour candidates were considered and Catherine Ashton came out on top.

Lessons should have been learned, but this time around, the PES looks no more united. Matteo Renzi did not attend the PES’s pre-summit conclave of party leaders. François Hollande, the French president, seems uninterested in anything other than securing an economic portfolio in the Commission for Pierre Moscovici.

3) The foreign policy post will go to a candidate of the centre-left, but there is no longer any assumption that the PES will provide the President of the European Council as well.

Less than a month ago, in the wake of the European Parliament elections, it seemed entirely plausible that the PES could lay claim to both the post of high representative for foreign and security policy and the presidency of the European Council, once it was decided that the centre-right EPP was to take the presidency of the European Commission (ie, Jean-Claude Juncker). Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s prime minister was being mooted as successor to Herman Van Rompuy. But in the meantime there has been a reaction against giving both jobs to PES candidates. The longer the delay in making the appointments, the weaker the PES claim, as the appointment of Juncker will be banked and discounted by the EPP. The Liberals too are restive and claiming that they should get one of the jobs. Last night EPP leaders – notably Angela Merkel – were much more explicit than hitherto in saying that the PES should take the high representative job, but then spelled out that the president of the European Council should be able to shape a consensus. The socialists are short of candidates.

4) The European Council does not take seriously the parliamentary hearings for nominated European commissioners.

Herman Van Rompuy suggested last night that, although the choice of a high representative would not be made until the end of August, it should still be possible for the European Parliament to hold its confirmation hearings in late September and for the Commission to take up office on schedule, ie, 1 November. Perhaps. But the timing is tight. Jean-Claude Juncker, the incoming president of the Commission, will not be able to finalise his line-up of commissioners until the high representative job is decided – because he or she will also be a member of the college and will take his or her country’s place at the Commission table. So the likes of Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, which might covet the high representative post, will not know until the end of August whether they are actually going to be providing someone else, such as a European commissioner for taxation. MEPs will not want to give the impression that their hearings will be the same whoever is nominated. So they will wait until they have names and portfolios before deciding on questions. Nor will they want to have their approval taken for granted. Even if Juncker can scrape together a team with at least nine women (which was the paltry number in the last college), MEPs might find other reasons to delay their approval. A vote of approval in October’s plenary session is not a foregone conclusion. Not least, that is because the European political parties – the likes of the EPP, the PES and ALDE – are struggling to achieve coherence between positions in the European Council and positions in the Parliament. If the party coherence was greater (or just more discipline was applied), then Juncker’s task would be easier.

5) The east is not powerless

The Mogherini contest provided what may prove to be an important example of the European Union’s eastern member states asserting themselves. They became resentful that on an appointment that concerned them most – as neighbours of Russia and customers for its gas and its pipelines – they had barely been consulted. This resentment was not universal, but it was strong enough to derail the appointment. The three Baltic states were opposed, with Lithuania most outspoken. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s centre-right prime minister, would have had no problem at all with an EU foreign-policy chief who is friendly with the Kremlin. Slovakia and Bulgaria, too, would not have vetoed Mogherini’s appointment. But as fellow members of the Visegrád group, Hungary and Slovakia felt compelled at least nominally to back Poland’s candidate, Radek Sikorski, or at least to abstain from backing Mogherini.
At a meeting of centre-right leaders ahead of the summit, Merkel had a 20-minute bilateral discussion with Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, in view of the assembled reporters, and Tusk later confirmed that his name had been floated as a possible compromise candidate for European Council president. While Tusk appears reluctant to accept, he has emerged as a credible player.

6) Matteo Renzi has a lot to learn about how the European Union works

Renzi is new to European politics, just as he is still fairly new to Italian national politics. Unlike many who ascend to the leadership of their country, he has not served a preparatory apprenticeship in EU circles. Without previous ministerial experience, he has not been a regular visitor to meetings of the Council of Ministers, for instance. Last night, the inexperience showed. He had not done his homework, either in the PES, or in the European Council. His assertiveness, which has been taken as an asset in domestic politics (witness his ruthless despatch of Enrico Letta, his predecessor as party leader and prime minister), backfired. He expected to get his way, and as resistance to Federica Mogherini hardened, he was not prepared to contemplate alternatives. He has probably overplayed his hand. In the aftermath of the European Parliament election results, having defeated Silvio Berlusconi one the one hand, and faced down Beppe Grillo on the other, he looked strong. But the more time elapses after the election results and the longer the Italian economy bumps along without any Renzi-inspired reform, the weaker his standing in the European Council. He does not seem prepared to contemplate a face-saving option, which would be to see Letta become president of the European Council. Although that would elevate an Italian, Renzi is interested only in elevating his Italian, ie Mogherini. So will he take a lesson in compromise between now and the end of August? Or will he model himself on David Cameron (who misread the antecedents from Margaret Thatcher’s day) and go down to inglorious defeat?