New year’s resolution: sack some European commisioners?

Extract: brussels diary

With the appointment of a new European commission due in the early part of the new year, Brussels officials are bracing themselves for the return of a familiar debate: should there be super-commissioners? With 27 people around the table, the commission is not only an unwieldy institution but also one with wildly varied workloads. The Lisbon treaty was supposed to slim the size of the college but Ireland is pressing to keep one commissioner per member state as part of a package of concessions to help stage a second referendum in 2009. Hence the argument for strengthening big portfolios, perhaps by attaching to them a junior commissioner to whom lesser tasks could be delegated.

The problem is that, since all commissioners are equal, creating a hierarchy contravenes a fundamental principle. The commission president, José Manuel Barroso, has experimented with five “vice-presidents” of the European commission who have an enhanced status but no formal extra powers. The results have been less than impressive. The “first” vice-president is Margot Wallstrom of Sweden, who was supposed to help persuade the European public of the merits of the Lisbon treaty. Although she has a reputation as a good communicator, Wallstrom disappeared without trace when the Irish rejected the document in their referendum. In any case, every one of the vice-presidents has been outshone by Viviane Reding, commissioner for information society and media, who represents tiny Luxembourg.

This is an extract taken for Prospect’s monthly Brussels Diary, by Manneken Pis, available in full to subscribers of the magazine.

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Brussels diary: have Europe and America swapped?

Extract: Prospect's Brussels diary

It has not been widely noticed but the Czech Republic takes over the EU presidency in January just at the time that Barack Obama is inaugurated in Washington. Vaclav Klaus, the Czech Republic president, is both a Euro and a climate change sceptic. So we can look forward to an intriguing role reversal, at least on the environment, as the man representing the supposedly progressive Europeans meets the leader of the supposedly reactionary Americans. Barack Obama has already pledged to invest $15bn a year in renewable energy, create 5m “green jobs” in the US and set a firm target for reducing emissions. Will the EU be able to keep up?

Yet the environment might be the exception. Now that liberal Europeans have got what they wanted with Obama’s election, some are starting to wonder if much is really going to change. One view is that, although George W Bush’s first term marked the high point of the neocons, Bush’s second term was rather different. In recent years European co-operation with Washington has improved and therefore the room for positive change is less than you might think. And, from what is known of Obama’s politics, there may be both opportunities and problems.
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