Brussels diary: the French vs Ashton

Poor old Herman van Rompuy, the first holder of the EU’s full-time presidential post. For his first six weeks in office, the former Belgian prime minister retained a Trappist vow of silence as he toured European capitals, preparing for a special one-day summit of EU leaders he had called. The strategy was to keep out of the limelight until he could use the meeting to exceed expectations and show himself to be the EU’s powerful new kid on the block.

The first half of this plan—staying low-key—certainly worked. Rarely in Brussels, Van Rompuy gave almost no interviews and met no journalists, making only a couple of speeches and giving just one press conference, in Madrid. So reclusive was he that some observers compared him to Yuri Andropov, president of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, who was almost never seen but would occasionally issue communiqués which were pored over for clues on policy.

Unfortunately, part two of the Van Rompuy plan for greatness didn’t go so well. The aim of his summit, held in Brussels on 11th February, was to start crafting plans for a new form of economic government overseen by the heads of state and administered by the European council, which meets under the chairmanship of Van Rompuy. Instead, the meeting was overwhelmed by the Greek debt crisis and worries in the markets that the eurozone may be about to implode. Van Rompuy was a bit player because the key question—on what to say about a possible Greek bailout—depended on getting a deal between France and an ultra-cautious Germany.

When a minimalist agreement was reached, Van Rompuy did get to read out the statement. But even this was a disaster. The microphones failed, forcing him to read his statement several times in three languages as the commission president, José Manuel Barroso, stood visibly freezing by his side. Having convened the meeting in the elegant surroundings of the Bibliothèque Solvay, rather than the normal EU building, there were no journalists anywhere near, leaving the market-moving comments of Van Rompuy inaudible to many of the people who needed to hear them most. And when the scheduled business of the summit finally got underway, Van Rompuy suggested, to the amazement of most EU leaders, that they should meet in Brussels much more often, perhaps once a month. After this first summit, the idea is being quietly shelved.

Ashton and Katie Price

Meanwhile Catherine Ashton, the Briton who surprised everyone including herself when she became the EU foreign policy supremo, has been having a torrid time at the hands of the French and British press. Most vicious was an attack from Jean Quatremer, the veteran Brit-baiter and correspondent of the French newspaper Libération, who painted a picture of a workshy paper-pusher who turns off her mobile phone at 8pm and—worse—returns regularly to her family in England.

French diplomats proclaim themselves alarmed at the ridiculing of Ashton and have even asked journalists what they can do to help. The answer, of course, is to stop their ministers briefing against her, as France’s minister for Europe, Pierre Lellouche, did most flagrantly in an interview in Le Figaro. Here he compared her decision not to go to Haiti after its earthquake unfavourably with the energetic style of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

British diplomats concede that Ashton is not a strategic foreign policy thinker, but they hope that she can at least get some better public relations advice. After the hoo-ha over her non-appearance in Haiti and the lack of EU visibility there, some caution was surely needed in choosing the places she did want to be seen. Most advisers would not have selected the appearance she made straight after the Brussels summit: as a star guest at this year’s Vienna Opera Ball alongside the glamour model Katie Price.

Surprise support

If the Conservatives win this year’s election, Britain will once again be applying the brakes on EU initiatives, returning the country to the semi-detached days of the 1990s. Well, that’s the theory. But pragmatism seems to be triumphing among the Cameroons, who have noticed that even American diplomats are unimpressed at the prospect of a Conservative government making the EU yet more dysfunctional.

The first sign that the Tory high command was quietly mending fences emerged when Catherine Ashton made her first appearance before the European parliament in December. Here she was able to taunt her Tory MEP critics with news that she had received a congratulatory message on her appointment from none other than David Cameron himself.

It seems this is part of a pattern that extends into more controversial political territory. Late last year, the Tories publicly lambasted Gordon Brown for losing the battle over EU top jobs by allowing the French to get a grip on the internal market portfolio at the European commission, one which includes regulation of the City. After he clinched the job, the Frenchman Michel Barnier received congratulations from Brown, and Alistair Darling at the treasury. But it turns out that both messages came some time after the one from George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.