Manneken Pis may have correctly predicted (see Brussels diary, December) that Herman van Rompuy, the harmless, haiku-loving, Belgian premier, would become the first permanent president of the European Council. But our crystal ball didn’t foresee the appointment going alongside—that of Catherine Ashton as the EU’s foreign policy supremo. Ashton has no foreign policy experience and her appointment horrified many people. But, a few weeks on, her installation is being seen in a slightly more positive light. Part of the reason is that she performed adequately in her first appearance before a European parliament committee. Admittedly she ducked just about every foreign policy question. But she managed to wrongfoot Tory critics by telling them that she had received a congratulatory voicemail from none other than David Cameron.
However, the main reason for the willingness to give Ashton a chance is the legacy of her predecessor Javier Solana. Despite his decade in office, Eurocrats have to think long and hard to come up with concrete achievements to attribute to the Spanish ex-secretary general of Nato. True, Solana played an important mediating role several years ago in the Balkans. And he won himself a place on the foreign policy circuit, where his tactile brand of diplomacy put him on backslapping terms with foreign ministers around the globe. But to what purpose? Television viewers in Britain will rarely have seen him because the BBC long ago concluded that his English was not up to broadcast quality. The same decision was reached by French broadcasters and even in his native Spanish, Solana often rambled.
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