Brussels diary

The next president of the EU is unlikely to be Tony Blair. Think low-key Benelux man
November 18, 2009

As Prospect went to press, Gordon Brown was still fighting to install Tony Blair in the job of first full-time president of the European council. But Blair’s would-be assassins were emerging like the cast of an Agatha Christie whodunit. In Britain, William Hague told EU ambassadors that appointing Blair would be considered a hostile act by the Tories. And on the continent, Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, held the smoking revolver.

Over the years, Juncker has rarely concealed his dislike for all things Anglo-Saxon—apart, perhaps, for the British banks which set up shop in his tax-haven principality. Juncker, a chain-smoking bon viveur who doubles as the Luxembourg finance minister, has been at the EU’s top table since 1995. A German and French-speaker with good contacts in both countries, Juncker has carved out a role much larger than the size of his nation warrants. Though Luxembourg has a population of just 450,000, it was the oil that greased the wheels of the Franco-German tandem.

As finance minister, Juncker once helped humiliate Brown, then chancellor. Brown had unwisely claimed that, while staying outside the euro, Britain would still be invited to meetings of ministers of the single currency states. But when the moment came, he was politely asked to leave the room. Brown later got one over Juncker, overturning proposals for a European commission savings tax directive.



But it was Blair who Juncker really hated. In 2005, during the Luxembourg EU presidency, Blair wrecked carefully laid plans on the bloc’s budget negotiations. Juncker was left with nothing to show for his six months in charge.

Previously in 2004, Blair had torpedoed the prospects of then Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt becoming European commission president. So it is unsurprising that the Benelux countries recently agreed they didn’t want a big, high-profile EU president (ie Blair), even if they couldn’t decide which of their leaders would be better. Juncker then declared an interest in the job in a Le Monde interview and became the suicide bomber of the saga. Such a blunt declaration destroyed Juncker’s chances of emerging as a compromise candidate (though these were never high as French president Nicolas Sarkozy isn’t a fan). But his intervention exposed the strength of opposition to Blair.

According to one diplomat the manoeuvre was crucial. “It made clear that if Blair got the job,” he said, “he would have enemies around the table right from the start organising against him. Just imagine the atmosphere between Blair and Juncker.” By contrast, a low-key candidate from the Benelux suddenly looked more attractive. With Juncker out of the race that helped Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister and the Belgian prime minister, Herman van Rompuy. The latter is so low-key he threatens no one, and he is also what anti-terrorism officials call a “clean skin.” In office for just one year, Van Rompuy has had little time to upset any of his colleagues. As the battle entered its final stage, Poland’s ambassador to the EU, Jan Tombinski, summed up the dynamic. The candidate with the “lowest negative electorate” is likely to win.

Surprise signing

Like any good pantomime villain, Czech president Václav Klaus knows how to make a dramatic entrance. He had been holding up the 27th and last national ratification needed to bring the Lisbon treaty to life. A Eurosceptic and a longtime opponent of Lisbon, Klaus refused to sign the treaty until he had fresh guarantees from the EU that it would not affect claims on Czech property from Germans expelled during the second world war. Eventually, Klaus secured his desired concessions. But then there was one final hurdle in the form of the Czech constitutional court, which was asked to rule on the compatibility of the treaty with the country’s constitution.

When that court gave the greenlight, Klaus was expected to stall again. He was due to leave for the US the day after the judgment, giving him an actual excuse for the delay. Dressed in black, he made a statement to the media just after the court ruling. It was a lengthy rant about the treaty and journalists in Prague started to lose interest, feeling they’d heard it all before. By the time he reached his final sentence, one or two hacks had already drifted away. Unfortunately for them, Klaus’s last words before disappearing in a puff of smoke were that he’d signed the wretched document at 3pm.

Repeat patten

Earlier this year the name of Chris Patten, the former European commissioner, was mentioned as a possible candidate for the job of EU foreign policy chief. This must have been a moment of déjà vu for Patten who, in 2004, was briefly seen as a possible candidate for president of the European commission. Though pushed by the European centre-right, Patten never stood a chance because his own government did not put its weight behind his candidacy.

Reminiscing, one former official recalls why Patten never got Blair’s backing. There is only one job per nation in the European commission, including that reserved for the country that gets the post of president. And Blair had already promised Britain’s seat to Peter Mandelson.