After Nice
Cool Scandinavian breezes waft towards Brussels as Sweden girds itself for its maiden presidency on 1st January. With Nice mercifully out of the way, the big ticket item for G?ran Persson is making progress on the date for the first phase of enlargement. Another row looms.
But those dedicated neutrals in Stockholm will also have fun trying to nail down the relations between the EU's fledgling military structures and Nato, especially after Jacques Chirac's summit reminder of French ambivalence towards the latter. British hacks enjoyed the way the Whitehall briefing machine purred into life at Nice to straighten out the Elys?en wobble. It was clever to wheel out Welsh wizard Emyr Jones-Parry, the FO's affable political director, to go over the small print of what had actually been agreed and why this wasn't, after all, a European army in the service of a superstate. But "Chirac rift on defence" still made the headlines. And there was another farewell reminder, that France sees its interests as synonymous with Europe. As Javier Solana, le haut repr?sentant, headed to the middle east, the Quai d'Orsay announced that Hubert Vedrine was going too. No wonder Solana is called le haut t?l?phonant.
How much of a failure for Prodi?
Sparkling sun and sea were more than fair compensation for the Day of the Jackal-style security around the Nice conference centre, though the atmosphere inside was torrid enough at times: divided counsels, foul temper and impassable national red lines. And that was just between Chirac and Jospin.
It was a story in its own right, even for Le Monde, that the president and his prime minister were staying in the same hotel on the Promenade des Anglais. Never mind. However much they loathe each other, both reserved even nastier private asides for the feline Pierre Moscovici, minister for European Affairs, identified as personifying the "arrogance" of France's presidency.
Yet Chirac's sharpest barbs of all were kept for poor Romano Prodi, who must count Nice as another low point in his inglorious tenure. Spats over milk quotas in the Azores, the commission's handling of the BSE crisis and Chirac's snub to David O'Sullivan, Prodi's chef de cabinet, were the small change of gossip as the deals were done. Wisely lowering expectations, Prodi predicted beforehand that the summit had only a 50-50 chance of success. But it depends what you mean by success. Having lobbied loud and long for removing national vetoes, especially on tax, the result was a big disappointment for him.
And who now remembers Prodi's bold fight back, in a speech to the European parliament, warning of the limits of inter-governmentalism? After the Nice stitch-up on voting weights, Germany, France and Britain have sealed their dominance with a permanent ability to block any combination of pesky small and medium-sized member states.
Failure, of course, was never really an option, though in the final hours there were moments when you really did believe it might all collapse. Some took relief in betting on outcomes: number of council votes for Latvia, total treaty clauses moved to QMV, and so on. Manneken, instead, thought of an imaginary prize giving: winner of the clear-eyed pre-summit briefing award was an understated Finn, who quipped: "An EU treaty is like a sausage. You like it but it's best not to know how it was made."
A Spanish victory
Spain's Jos? Mar?-a Aznar also won a prize for tough talk, getting not only the votes he needed to become a medium-sized power, but also keeping his treasured veto on structural funds until 2007, after the next budget round. That means it's effectively business as usual until 2013. Praised by Brussels insiders for his liberalising economic policies and the object of sympathy because of Basque terrorism, Aznar was still the butt of politically incorrect jokes about practising Catholics and the "confessional" session with Chirac. Spain's promotion riled Portugal's Ant?nio Gutterres, leading the charge of the smalls. Last year Gutterres could have had the commission job that Prodi ended up with. Who knows, perhaps he's thinking about applying next time round? Long-term business, Europe.
Ecevit's left ear
Pascal Lamy wouldn't dream of siding with the French government on trade and services, and the cigar-smoking commissioner could only watch glumly as Chirac maintained l'exception culturelle française, thus weakening the EU's position in talks with the WTO. But there was no stopping Anna Diamantopoulou, the Greek social affairs commissioner, as she lobbied to remove the creative ambiguity about the terms for negotiations with Turkey from a commission paper on enlargement. That went down badly with her German colleague, G?nter Verheugen, and the Turks were put back on track. But a track to what? There was uproar in ever-sensitive Ankara over the non-appearance of B?lent Ecevit in the "family photo" of leaders of the EU 15 with their colleagues from the 13 candidate countries. Only Ecevit's left ear was visible because of advantageous positioning by his Polish counterpart, Jerzy Buzek. Add to that Turkey's omission from diagrams showing post-enlargement voting weights (where Turkey should be second to Germany) and you wonder whether Turks are supposed to believe they can ever join.
