Commission President Jacques Santer has just passed the halfway mark of his five-year term, so Brussels is already fizzing with rumours about his likely successor. The rules of the game are simple: Santer comes from little Luxembourg, so it should now be someone from a big country. France is out because it had two-term Delors. Germany is a possible, but Helmut's scorched-earth way with rising political stars has left no obvious candidate. Martin Bangemann, Germany's heavyweight commissioner, is too fond of his yacht. Some outside money is going on his compatriot, Monika Wulf-Mathies, partly because of her sex. But the Club Med are baying that it is their turn, so forget any Brit. Pending a happy end to inquiries into the secret war against the Basque ETA terrorists, Spain's former prime minister Felipe G?nzalez is available. So is his countryman Javier Solana, who has impressed that part of Brussels with real firepower in his stint as Nato secretary-general. But the Italians-who field the most impressive team of commissioners by far, with the pint-sized publicist Emma Bonino and the deceptively professorial Mario Monti-are emerging as the ones to watch. But there is only one job, and they could cancel out each other's campaigns-leaving the way open for Italy's current premier Romano Prodi.
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some very smart money is looking even further ahead, forecasting that Prodi will get one turn, and then be replaced by Erkki Liikanen, the rising star of the commission. A jazz-loving wine buff and marathon runner, Liikanen comes from a small country (Finland), and is that usefully adaptable political animal: a very moderate social democrat who can pass for a Blairite in the long Lapland night. He would be the first president from the Nordics-and after the Club Med, it will be their turn. You read it here first.
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padraig flynn, pride of Eire, social affairs commisssioner, and increasingly polished television performer, has just taken delivery of his brand-new Mercedes 500 limousine, complete with chauffeur. A car befitting the commissioner who has made it his mission to ban tobacco ads across Europe, however much Bernie Ecclestone may bung the Labour party. It was the least that Europe's grateful citizens could provide for the Big Fella after he managed not to make a total bog of the EU's special jobs summit. But one of the "alternatively employed" folk whom the good Padraig wants to encourage into retraining or a low paid job had other ideas. After dropping off his charge, Flynn's chauffeur was followed home, ordered out of the car at gunpoint and forced to watch the thug drive off in style.
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charlie whelan, the Treasury spin-doctor, scuffled with Lionel Barber, the FT Europe editor, on his last visit to Brussels. And the continental press seems unimpressed by arrogant Whitehall spin doctors too. Vicky Bowman, spokeswoman for the British mission in Brussels, has already been ticked off for the sin of nationalist briefing in the Commission coffee bar. While Alastair Campbell's blunt and jocular lobby ways do not go down well at his Luxembourg briefings. "We have never had a more ridiculous briefing," complained Swedish radio. The Germans could not follow the slang, and tried to establish whether there were some jogging pics of what Campbell called Blair's "brief run round the block" with Santer. The Italians were baffled by the emphasis on obscure British by-election results. The Greeks got cross when they thought they were being blamed for the Turkish problem. The Spaniards are furious about Gibraltar. The French think the spin doctors are barmy, except for one willowy haquette who claims that Whelan's pendulous and Habsburg-like lower lip reveals "an intriguing sensuality."
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next year's christmas present problem is solved, with the arrival of Sandy Vershbow as new US Ambassador to Nato. Sandy's wife is a jewellery designer, and ever since Bill Clinton asked to see samples of her work for a present for Hillary, her stuff has been the in-gift in Washington. Wearing it might be politically savvy too. It will be delicate for Ambassador Vershbow to get too blunt about burden-sharing with his colleagues if they are sporting his wife's products.
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the french prided themselves on their fight against the Anglo-Saxon "f-word" at the Luxembourg jobs summit. They wanted to ban the idea of "flexibility" from the labour market part of the communiqu?. None of this law-of-the-jungle Blairite efficiency in the European social model, s'il vous plait. The French successfully battled to insert souplesse instead. But turn to your Collins-Robert dictionary, and you will find souplesse translated as "flexibility."
