A tricky autumn term
Brussels returned from its summer holidays to face a difficult autumn and the prospect of a grim year ahead. Nothing in the institutions of Europe is going as planned, except for the quiet competence of the current Finnish presidency and the delicate courtship of the other member states by the Blair government-and even this has been tarnished by the setback of the summer elections which left the European parliament dominated by the centre-right.
At least the discomfiture of the commission looks familiar, amid the testy hearings of the new commissioners before parliament has left the dismal impression that Romano Prodi's new broom has not swept very clean after all. Prodi himself still carries an enduring whiff of controversy, despite judicial clearance in Italy, over the links between his private consultancies and the big corporations which did well out of the privatisation of the Italian state conglomerate which Prodi ran. Prodi is furious about it, and his friends and cabinet complain that it is all hideously unfair. But in choosing Prodi to replace the unfortunate Jacques Santer and clean up a palpably flawed commission, Tony Blair and Prodi's other backers among the member states presented him as pure as Caesar's wife-a touching faith in the theoretical possibility of rising through the muck of the old Italian system without any of it sticking.
All the recycled commissioners got a rough ride from parliament. Neil Kinnock lost his cool when goaded by the Tory MEP James Elles. "Repugnant" was the word Elles used to describe the tactics of the old Santer commission in blocking parliament's inquiries into waste and fraud. Finland's Erkki Liikanen again protested that he was not involved in the suspension of the now-vindicated commission whistle-blower, Paul van Buitenen, despite his attempts to portray van Buitenen as a cent or two short of a euro. Van Buitenen, when under investigation for leaking documents, had written a letter warning that the commission's security bureau had been buying high-powered snipers' rifles with telescopic sights. Liikanen leaked the letter to a handful of chosen hacks and MEPs, with comments about overstrain and paranoia, only to find that the hacks then went on to establish that such weapons had indeed been acquired.
But the commissioner given the hardest time was the new Belgian nominee, former finance minister Philippe Bosquin, mainly through the guilt-by-association which has clung to Belgian politics since the corruption scandal which sank the former Nato secretary-general Willy Claes. MEPs assert privately that a deal has been done, under which Prodi gets his commission approved, on the understanding that Bosquin, and possibly one or two others, are on probation and that he will demand their resignations the moment parliament cuts up rough. Prodi's chaps deny it, naturally.
Decline and enfeeblement
The fact is that Prodi's tenure looks like being Act Two in the long drama of the decline and enfeeblement of the commission as the great locomotive of the European project. And if Act One was the wretched Santer commission, then the Prologue was the era of Jacques Delors, which stands as a solemn warning against commission presidents who actually believe in something. Like Santer, Prodi is not expected to believe in very much, except in getting the commission's trains to run on time and on budget and somehow making "Brussels" less remote and more popular to the unenthusiastic European voters.
The main lines of EU strategy for the coming decade are set: enlargement; consolidation of the euro; establishing a common foreign and security policy. Prodi's job is to build on decisions already taken. Given the new powers of parliament and the clouded reputation of the commission, he probably could not do much more. The real winners in this process have been the member states, who picked Prodi, and who are asserting ever more control over their own MEPs. The problem is that the current crop of leaders do not command quite the weight of past teams like Kohl and Mitterrand. This is why Schr?der's political setbacks in Germany, along with Blair's difficulties in Northern Ireland, are so important; British hopes of a new Blair-Schr?der axis in Europe are looking thin.
