Just how Eurosceptic is Gordon? The chancellor's rare appearance at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Vienna earlier in April—he had missed the three previous ones—has reminded Britain's diplomats that life may be rather different when the great change takes place at No 10. Brown used his re-emergence on the European stage to call for an independent committee to look into a lack of competition in key markets. That came as something of a surprise to the European competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, who happens to think that this is her job. Kroes was only forewarned of the Brown plan a few hours before the chancellor touched down in Vienna for the informal meeting of finance ministers. Earlier she had been left hanging around for a call from the treasury—which never came.
This is a departure from Tony Blair's glad-handing style, which has characterised the last nine years. Blair was, admittedly, hardly the most loyal of friends (Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, and Guy Verhofstadt, the current Belgian premier, are one-time allies later hung out to dry). But Blair's personal skills helped him through several crises and eased the path to a deal on the EU budget in December. As one diplomat put it, Blair goes in and strokes the room. By contrast, Brown is more likely to deliver a lecture on the wonders of the British economy.
The optimistic scenario among pro-Europeans in the foreign office is that Brown will undergo a conversion once he gets into No 10. His current hard line is motivated, the theory goes, by his desire to needle Blair via the Eurosceptic press, the treasury's institutional antipathy to most things European, and Brown's exclusion from the 12-strong Eurogroup of single currency countries. Once he is prime minister, Brown will see the benefits of being liked and having allies at EU summits.
Convinced? Most diplomats aren't. The chancellor's apparent disdain for continental politics seems genuine and heartfelt. One diplomat points out that Brown's seminal experience in EU negotiations was when he, alone, resisted plans to put a minimum withholding tax on savings in order to clamp down on investors who live in one country and bank in another. Worried about the effect on the Eurobond market, Brown vetoed the plan, putting up an alternative involving the exchange of information between countries. In the end, his obstinacy prevailed.
Taking a Eurosceptic line would avoid the risk of giving space to David Cameron's Tories. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that Brown will depart from the habits of a political lifetime: thinking through an issue, deciding on a strategy, sticking to it and repeating his aims ad nauseam. As one diplomat puts it, "You can get a long way by taking up a very strategic position and holding to it." Thatcher, after all, hardly went in for winning friends, and Brown has an easier hand to play. With 24 other leaders around the table, he may never find himself isolated—no matter how truculent he gets.
Neelie Kroes needs English lessons
Meanwhile, Neelie Kroes has the dubious distinction of being one of very few international politicians to emerge from the Netherlands with distinctly dodgy English. So at home in the language was the previous Dutch commissioner, Frits Bolkestein, that he famously used the phrase "a menagerie of mythical monsters" on the Today programme while debunking one popular Euromyth. By contrast, Kroes's sentences are doing well if they reach a conclusion. One fonctionnaire says: "It's a mystery. Before she came to the commission she was on the board of about 50 companies, including Shell; don't tell me their board meetings were in Dutch." However, a journalist from the Netherlands has an explanation: "It's not a language question," he says. "She sounds just as bad in Dutch."
Turkey's fall from grace
In 2005, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was the EU's darling, the man who was putting his country on a reforming path and could help Europe reach an accommodation with the Muslim world. Now the EU's enlargement commissioner, Olly Rehn, is warning of a "train crash" in the membership negotiations with Ankara which were launched last October. Since then the pace of reform has slowed, tension with the Kurdish minority has boiled over, Erdogan has begun to pander to Islamic voters and has dug in on the neuralgic issue of Cyprus. Efforts to open a chapter of membership talks on education and culture have foundered in an internal row over whether other issues (like Kurdish rights and textbooks) should be included.
Some of Erdogan's behaviour can be explained by the possible onset of early elections. Erdogan, who wants to become president, is trying to shore up traditional voters in an Islamic-rooted party. It is not the first time he has done so, as his flirtation with the idea of outlawing adultery proved.
More alarming is the issue of the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which could, as Rehn suggests, derail talks in the autumn when Turkey will be asked to open its ports to Cypriot-registered vessels. Here the Turks feel that the EU has failed to deliver on its pledge to end the economic boycott of northern Cyprus (which backed the UN peace plan in a referendum two years ago, unlike the Greek south of the island). Many Europeans share this feeling. Unfortunately, with the Greek Cypriots now members of the EU, the union's hands are tied.
