After the victory, the horse-trading...
Cologne should have been a marvellous summit, with EU leaders celebrating the first collective victory the European tribes can boast since they destroyed the Roman Empire. For the Germans, it was the first successful military venture since the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. What better time to pick the new Monsieur PESC and his number two, the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza supposed to run the EU's vaunted new Common Foreign and Security Policy? (The French acronym explains the PESC. Some of us prefer the German acronym, GASP, so we can call the two men Big GASP and Little GASP.)
Javier Solana, who had been advised by Bill Clinton to take the job at the Nato summit in Washington in April, waited well into May to decide whether he would. The key factor was the resignation of Spain's Socialist party leader, which briefly stirred Solana's hopes of going home to be a future prime minister. But that dream didn't last, so he tipped off the German ambassador to Nato, Joachim Bitterlich, that he was ready to be Big GASP.
As a social democrat, Solana did not want to go cap in hand to the Spanish conservative government of Jos?-Maria Aznar asking to be nominated, particularly since they were already nominating Carlos Westendorp, currently the EU proconsul in Bosnia.
Greece's quid pro quo
News of the capitulation in Belgrade came on the summit's first day. This delayed the formal choice of Big and Little GASP until day two, by which time almost everyone had hangovers. The Greeks must have had the worst, because their premier, Constantine Simitis, threw away a lot of the credit he had gained for standing up to his anti-war protesters by opposing Solana. It seemed the usual Greek moan-Solana was too partial to the Turks. (The Greek view is that anybody who is not actually bombing Ankara is too partial to the Turks.) The real reason was that the Greeks wanted to make a show of giving way graciously on one thing, so they could later collect the quid pro quo of removing from the summit conclusions the paragraph carefully crafted by Gerhard Schr?der and Tony Blair which would have put Turkey into the list of EU accession candidates.
Schr?der's last gasp
So Big GASP was agreed. Then it came to Little GASP. Britain thought it had been frightfully clever by nominating the wily David Hannay to this backroom job, which will design and run the CFSP machine while Big GASP visits trouble spots to get eggs thrown at him. The Danes nominated their own tiny but perfectly formed ambassador to the EU, Poul Skytte Christoffersen, while the French put forward "the most intelligent and most arrogant man in Brussels," Pierre de Boissieu, their EU ambassador. Most people who know the three men wanted the Dane, because Hannay and de Boissieu are fiendish types with brilliant reputations and almost no friends. But that is not how things work in Europe.
The first vote went 13 to 2 against de Boissieu: France and Germany against the rest. Most people would have got the message, but Schr?der pressed on, using all the weight of the presidency. Chirac stressed that this was a European job; in Solana, the Americans already had one Atlanticist as Big GASP. Why should not a dedicated European (by which he meant anti-American) be Little GASP? It was a testy session, but everybody knew the Franco-German axis had fixed up de Boissieu in advance as the price of Solana. So when Schr?der affronted all collegial rules by saying, "I have to insist" on de Boissieu, he got his way.
Small country blues
The testiness was made worse by the small countries' increasing resentment at the way the big ones carve everything up among themselves. Tony Blair is right to say that he has transformed Britain's image and influence in Europe. But his alliance with Germany to secure Romano Prodi for the commission and Solana for Big GASP, and his alliance with France to push the European defence plan, is resulting in a very cross Benelux, an outraged Scandinavia and four sullen neutrals. The big countries may pay a price for this when it comes to the new inter-governmental conference on reforming the institutions.
No luck for Rudolf
Contributing to Schr?der's hangover was the scotch whisky he sipped at the German Chancellor's traditional midnight fireside chat with the German hacks. He revealed that the favourite to replace Solana at Nato, his defence minister Rudolf Scharping, would not be going to Nato after all. The new European Defence Identity required Scharping to stay home and restructure German forces.
And what about the Nato job?
So who gets Nato? The Americans, who still cannot work out that getting your way in Europe means never showing your hand, were pushing the cause of Michael Portillo. (Or maybe the Americans are very smart and really dislike him.) Germany could field Helmut Kohl's former defence minister, Volker R?he, who is probably the best qualified candidate but wants to stay in German domestic politics. Poor old G?nter Verheugen, Joschka Fischer's deputy in the German foreign ministry, who gets nominated for everything (including Big GASP) but is always the bridesmaid and never the bride, will probably be told to throw his battered hat into the ring again. An interesting outside bet would be Hans Haekkerup, the soft-spoken Danish defence minister from a good social democrat dynasty who had a son serving with Nato's S-FOR in Bosnia. As long as the Americans keep quiet about their admiration for him, the Dane is worth a flutter. And it would mollify the small countries.
