里斯本條約通過後，歐盟理事會設一位常任的主席（歐盟理事會主席 President of European Council 亦俗稱的歐盟總統）主席與歐盟外交與安全政策高級代表(High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy,俗稱的歐洲外長)，由選舉產生。英國的經濟學人用看啊兩隻平庸的老鼠作標題來評論當選的人：比利時的首相范宏畢（Herman Van Rompuy）與英國艾希頓(Catherine Ashton)。這可不是什麼恭維！是因為英國人吃味前首相布萊爾(Tony Blair)不能順利出現成為理事主席嗎？這我就不得而知了。

在選前，今年的十月初，歐洲意會理的兩大政治聯盟歐洲社會主義黨與歐洲人民黨就已經協商瓜分了這兩個職務了。中間偏右的歐洲人民黨取得理事主席職位，而中間偏右的社會主義黨取得外交與安全政策高級代表一職。薩柯奇就明白表示為什麼英國艾希頓會出線，因為：需要一位女性出任歐盟的最高職務，需由一位政治立場偏左的人出任以平衡范宏畢的右派立場，還有我們的英國朋友想要這個職位。

這樣的結果似乎使得歐盟在政治上想要和美中並列，或讓歐洲有一個共同聲音的希望變的很遙遠。

今年12月起由瑞士當任歐洲理事會(Council of Europe)主席，或許正因如此令人聯想到統合後的歐盟會不會成為一個大瑞士：富裕，高傲冷漠，只管自己，不太與人交往。但是選出了比利時的歐盟理事會常任席，看看這兩個職位人選的產生，意識型態（政治傾向），性別...等因素的考量都在民主之上，黨派協商劃分政治資源與職務，看來統合後的歐洲，就是一個大比利時。




  Leaders        

Europe's motley leaders        
Behold, two mediocre mice        
Nov 26th 2009        
From The Economist print edition        

The European Union’s choices for its new top jobs reveal a pitiful lack of global ambition        

EPA      
 

THE Roman poet Horace might have been summing up today’s European Union when he wrote that “the mountains will be in labour, and will give birth to a ridiculous mouse.” By choosing two virtual unknowns, with paltry political experience, as the first permanent president of the European Council and as the new EU foreign-policy supremo, Europe’s leaders have made their union look ridiculous.       


Both Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy and Britain’s Catherine Ashton are decent in their way. Mr Van Rompuy has been a surprisingly effective Belgian prime minister, holding his fissiparous country together well enough for some to fret over his departure from domestic politics. Lady Ashton piloted the Lisbon treaty through the British House of Lords and has handled the European Commission’s trade portfolio without falling out with her colleagues (unlike some predecessors), even if she has no foreign-policy background and has never been elected to anything. Both are suited to the endless rounds of consensus-building that the EU loves and lives by.       


That alone is enough for some Europhiles to welcome these appointments. Yet they miss two points. The first is that the Van Rompuy-Ashton team was manifestly nobody’s dream ticket. Mr Van Rompuy emerged only because weightier and better-known candidates, including Britain’s Tony Blair, fell foul of the objections of one leader or another. Lady Ashton was the third or even fourth choice of Gordon Brown when Britain was offered the post. Picking people for their inoffensiveness, inexperience (both have been in their jobs for only a year), party affiliation, nationality or sex—everything, in fact, except their abilities—is unlikely to lead to the best candidates.        

The second mistake is to overlook the aims of the Lisbon treaty. Laboriously pushed through after six years (and three rejections by referendum), it seeks to give the EU a political role in the world to match its economic weight. The permanent council president replaces the present confusing system that appoints a new president from among EU members every six months. The new high representative for foreign policy will have a portfolio (and budget) in the European Commission as well as a large “diplomatic” service. The idea is that the EU should become both more powerful and more accessible for America, China, India and elsewhere.        

But it is hard to see the political leaders of America, China and India, or even their foreign ministers, ever taking Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton entirely seriously. Instead they will talk, as now, to their counterparts in big countries like Germany, France and Britain. That will largely vitiate any notion of the EU at last speaking with one voice, or of answering the famously mythical Kissinger question about whom to call when an outsider wants to talk to Europe.      


Now every inoffensive Belgian can dream of something        

It is just as hard to believe that Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy wanted such an outcome when they first resurrected the Lisbon treaty from the bones of the EU constitution. They accepted it now mainly to preserve their own grip on the EU. Many Eurosceptics argue similarly, because they prefer nation-states to Brussels. Yet in truth a weak council president and foreign-policy boss will boost the more federalist actors on the EU stage: the European Commission and its president, José Manuel Barroso, and especially the European Parliament. Indeed, the biggest winners in this, as from the Lisbon treaty itself, are the European Parliament and its pan-European parties—despite their feeble democratic mandate (see article). It is enough to make you wonder, yet again, if the treaty was worth ratifying at all.       



http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14966247        




  Europe        

Charlemagne        
We are all Belgians now        
Nov 26th 2009        
From The Economist print edition        

How the European Union's horse-trading over top jobs reflects murky coalition-building        

Illustration by Peter Schrank        
      
EUROPE, it is said, must resist the temptation to become a giant Switzerland: ie, a smug, rich, insular place. But judging by the antics of European leaders as they filled two top European Union jobs on November 19th, the club faces another danger altogether: becoming a giant Belgium.       

Lots of European countries indulge in shadowy coalition politics, with jobs divvied out among rival parties, but Belgium takes the biscuit. All Belgian governments are big coalitions, uniting parties that loathe one another, staffed by fixed quotas of ministers from the French- and Dutch-speaking communities (who also cannot stand each other). Democracy barely counts, as even parties thumped at the ballot box return to office. What is the link between this and the selection of Herman Van Rompuy as the first full-time president of the European Council, and of Catherine Ashton as a new foreign-policy chief? It is the European weakness for coalition politics, in which a quest for “balance” all too often trumps talent or merit.       


There were winners and losers from the process that led to Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton. The losers include those hoping for EU representatives to “stop the traffic” in Washington and Beijing. Mr Van Rompuy, an ascetic sort, has been prime minister of Belgium for less than a year: his name was pushed by France and Germany as a modest conservative from a small country who would chair EU summits without overshadowing them. Lady Ashton is capable and gets on with colleagues. But she has never held elected office and has no diplomatic experience. After a career in quasi-public agencies, she became a Labour minister, going to Brussels only in 2008 to take over the trade portfolio from Peter Mandelson. After the summit, Nicolas Sarkozy of France was asked why Lady Ashton was chosen. He gave three reasons: because it was felt a woman should hold a big EU job, because a centre-left politician was needed to “balance” Mr Van Rompuy and because “our British friends” wanted the post.       


Arguably, the biggest winners were the pan-European parties that unite politicians from Europe’s centre-right and centre-left. These umbrella parties, matched by parallel groups in the European Parliament, are barely known to the voters. They strain credibility as ideological alliances. The centre-left Party of European Socialists (PES) unites ex-communists from eastern Europe with Nordic social democrats. Yet most Nordic socialists are more comfortable with the free market than some nominally centre-right parties from France or Greece, which sit in the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).        

Britain, as ever, is an outlier. Labour is well to the right of the PES mainstream. The Conservatives were so appalled by EPP federalism that they recently left the group. That pleased Tory Eurosceptics but waved goodbye to much influence. It is little wonder that Britain has failed to take pan-European parties seriously. Yet in early October, the EPP and PES agreed to divide the two top jobs between them, with the centre-right getting the president’s post. That ruled out Tony Blair, a Labour man, but Britain ignored this. The British “underestimated the capacity of the EPP and the PES to make their deal stick,” says one diplomat. Instead, Gordon Brown pushed Mr Blair for council president all the way to November 19th (even if, for two weeks beforehand, that support was largely tactical). Hours before the summit met, he finally dropped Mr Blair in exchange for winning the foreign-policy post.       


The deal was done at a small meeting of PES leaders. The guest list reads more like a “Trivial Pursuit” question than a roll call of world leaders. It included Borut Pahor (prime minister of Slovenia, if you must ask), Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (PES president) and Martin Schulz (the group’s boss in the European Parliament), alongside better-known figures such as José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain. Mr Brown floated three names—Lord Mandelson, Geoff Hoon, a former defence secretary, and Lady Ashton. His colleagues deemed Lord Mandelson too abrasive (and he may not have been available anyway); Mr Hoon was tainted by Iraq; and they wanted a woman. So Lady Ashton it was.        

Browned off        

There were complications along the way. In recent weeks, sources reveal, Mr Zapatero tried to persuade Mr Brown himself to try for council president: a suggestion that overlooks Mr Brown’s air of frowning misery at most EU meetings. Many EU governments wanted Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, to have the foreign-policy job; he is clever and they wanted to harness Britain to the EU’s ambitions for a security and defence policy. But he preferred to stay in domestic politics. The European Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, promoted Lady Ashton because, as a serving commissioner, she ought to be more loyal than a newcomer. (The foreign-policy boss will answer to both the commission and national governments.)      


The new Lisbon treaty has boosted pan-European parties most of all. A dull-sounding change means that an absolute majority of the European Parliament must now approve the European Commission’s president and his college of commissioners. That means all big parties must agree, giving each a potential veto. Some national leaders did not realise they “couldn’t escape” the conditions of the pan-European parties, chuckles Mr Schulz. “They understand it better now.” Talk of Britain getting the single-market portfolio was also bluff, as the parliament would have vetoed a Briton in charge of financial services.        

This is a new world for national leaders used to majority government, such as Mr Brown. Others, like Mr Sarkozy, have cleverly used the threat of parliamentary hostility to kill candidates they dislike. It is a world of coalition deals, quotas and procedural ambushes. We are all Belgians now.        


http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14963491