More than eight years after the idea was first mooted, Europe has finally got a President. Leaders of the 27 members of the European Union (EU) picked Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian prime minister, as their choice for the post, late on Thursday evening. Baroness Catherine Ashton, currently the EU’s trade commissioner, was nominated High Representative for Foreign Policy, another new charge.
Both are expected to take their new charges in January. Neither of the new leaders have much international traction, being little known outside Europe. This has disappointed some analysts, who believe the new posts created an opportunity for Europe to have a more decisive role in world affairs; an opportunity they believe has now been wasted.
The final choice of names was the result of a long and less-than-edifying process of backroom negotiations among leaders jockeying for future and more important economic portfolios, in a bloc that is still more of an economic union than a political one, and looks set to remain so for the foreseeable future.
At issue was also the striking of an acceptable balance between the interests of the richer member-states and those less wealthy. Ensuring the representation of divergent political orientations and gender was a further, complicating, consideration.
Van Rompuy, 62, is an economist and has been Belgium’s prime minister for less than a year. Ashton, 53, has next to no foreign policy experience and has never been elected to anything. But Van Rompuy belongs to the Centre-Right, while Ashton is from Britain’s Labour Party, a needed political balance.
The Belgian Prime Minster is well regarded in Europe as an intelligent consensus-builder. In his short 11-month term as leader of Belgium, he has gone a long way in calming the tensions between the two communities that make up the country, the Dutch-speaking Flemish and the French-speaking Wallonians.
In picking him, the EU’s leaders have sent a signal that they see the primary role of the new President as a conciliator. Someone to calm ruffled feathers and work towards coordinating the efforts of 27 countries that sometimes have very different ideas about what is in the bloc’s best interests.
Ashton’s nomination followed a period of uncertainty, when the former favorite for the post, Britain’s charismatic Foreign Secretary David Miliband, ruled himself out from contention. He said that he preferred to work domestically, to revive the fortunes of the Labour Party.
Miliband’s decision is an indication of how EU jobs, even the top ones, are seen by many of the big players as less important than top jobs back home in the member-states.
Prior to becoming EU Trade Commissioner, Ashton was a relatively junior member of the British cabinet, as Leader of the House of Lords. However, she has shown herself to be competent in her short stint in Brussels, seamlessly picking up a portfolio she had little background in.
Under her leadership, the EU initialed a free trade deal with South Korea earlier this year, despite stout opposition from European automobile manufacturers. It has also come close to a deal that would end the “banana wars” over tariffs that apply to non-African producers, the bloc’s longest-running trade dispute.
Ashton was in India earlier this month, where she indicated the EU’s desire to speed up talks on a free trade agreement. She also promised to resolve New Delhi’s concerns over generic drug seizures at European ports.
