Category Archives: The European Union

Buttiglione on his way out?

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While most observers still expect a compromise between incoming Commission president Barroso and those groups in the EP which threatened to block his entire team over the Buttiglione row – Mr Barroso will meet with leading MEPs tomorrow -, according to EUPolitix.com’s press review, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reports that Rocco Buttiglione may “resign” today and be “replaced by Italy?s highly regarded foreign minister Franco Frattini.”

Update from EUPolitix:

Further pressure on Barroso to reshuffle his team came on Wednesday afternoon from parliament?s Greens who said Buttiglione was ?unacceptable? as a commissioner. One solution doing the rounds in parliament?s corridors late on Wednesday is for a three way swap of portfolios between the Italian, Dutch and French commissioners-designates. Buttiglione would take over the transport portfolio, Neelie Kroes would move to justice and Jacques Barrot would take on the competition dossier.

Update: After meeting with leading MEPs incoming commission president Barroso decided to take a chance with an unchanged commission line-up, including Mr Buttiglione. Without an apology, the latter once again regretted his comments that will now lead to a stand-off with the European Parliament on October 27. Even though Mr Barroso’s commission has backing from the center-right European People’s Party, Josep Borrell, the Parliament’s president said that with Socialist, Green and Liberal Parliamentary groups opposed it’s far from certain that Mr Barroso will win the vote. Given the institutional problems involved – as well as Mr Barroso’s offer to set up a cross-departmental working group on human rights – the latter Parliamentary parties haven’t ruled out voting for it yet – but remain highly critical. More here.
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Ever Closer Union.

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Over on Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell comments on the istitutional implications of the Buttiglione affair. While we are shocked to learn that The Economist does not like the recent self-confident behavior of the European Parliament with respect to the Commission hearings, Kieran Healy – duly apologetic – makes a fair point in the comments thread – “sorry to lower the tone of the discussion, but if he doesn?t get the job he should move to the San Fernando Valley: ?Rocco Buttiglione? is a Porn-Star Name, par execellence.” The producers of “Oral Office” will probably read this with pleasure…
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Facts & Faith, European Style.

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After linking to Ron Suskind’s critique of the Bush administration’s faith based decision style, it is only appropriate to mention that Rocco Buttiglione, Silvio Berlusconi’s nominee as Italy’s European commissioner, is causing a similar debate on this side of the pond – one with possibly important cnostitutional repercussions.
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Turkey and the Constitution

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Ohhhhhh, I can’t resist this. Anatole Kaletsky writing in the Times:

Turkey is likely to scupper the strongest argument in favour of ratifying the European constitution: the claim that voting rights among the EU member nations must be reformed to accommodate past and future enlargements. The fact is that, far from preparing the EU for the future, the constitution will have to be torn up if Turkey joins. Turkey?s rapidly growing population, which will overtake Germany?s by 2015, would give it more votes under the new constitution than any other nation. Since an EU with Turkey as the single most powerful member would make no sense to anyone, including even the Turks, enlargement would mean completely rewriting the constitution just five years after the new arrangements are supposed to come into force. While conspiracy theorists suspect that the constitution was drafted to block Turkey?s accession, it looks increasingly like Turkey will sabotage the new constitution.

We do seem to be creating something of a muddle here. Many thanks to Dave at North Sea Diaries for the link and extract.

This summary of yesterday’s Commission discussion on Turkish entry also makes interesting reading.

The Mediterranean Diet?

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This should come as a shock, but somehow I am not exactly surprised. Mediterranean cooking evidently isn’t always as benign and healthy as it seems.

Greece was warned on Thursday that it could face legal action for grossly under-reporting its national deficit and debt figures but was told it would not be ejected from the 12-country eurozone.

Revised figures revealed Greece broke the single currency’s 3 per cent of GDP deficit ceiling every year in the 2000-3 period.

The European Union will launch an inquiry to check the veracity of the figures it provided before 2000, the year Greece qualified to join the single currency.

The scale of the inaccuracies has sent shockwaves across the single currency area, which relies on member states to provide sound economic data.

…………Eurostat, the EU’s statistical arm, could start legal proceedings against Athens for breaching accounting rules.

Greece, however, is unlikely to be ejected from the eurozone, even though there are now doubts about whether it complied with the membership rules before 2000.

The new data revised the Greek 2000 deficit to 4.1 per cent from a prior estimate of 2 per cent.

The 2001 and 2002 deficits now stand at 3.7 per cent compared with 1.4 per cent previously. The 2003 deficit, which had already been revised up in May to 3.2 per cent from 1.7 per cent, is now shown to be even higher – at 4.6 per cent of GDP.

Cost-overruns on the building of venues and transport systems for last month’s Athens Olympics games, estimated at more than ?2.5bn ($3bn, ?1.7bn), contributed to a projected deficit of 5.3 per cent of GDP this year.
Source: Financial Times

It is also worth bearing in mind that the accumulated Greek deficit currently is one of the highest in the EU and stands at around 100% of GDP. The interesting question now is what happens next.

That Yes Vote

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That yes vote on the EU constitution gets to look more precarious by the day:

France’s ratification of the proposed European constitution will look more challenging than ever on Thursday night if Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister and a leading figure in the opposition Socialist party, uses a television interview to call on his supporters to vote ?no? in next year’s referendum.

The poll promises to be the main event in the 2005 political calendar in France and pollsters say Jacques Chirac, the president, has little chance of winning it without socialist support. Mr Fabius is seen as holding the balance of power in determining the party’s position, and is expected to tilt against the constitution.
Source: Financial Times

New EC lineup

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Barroso has announced who will get what portfolio in the new commission (they won’t take office until november)

EUobserver reports.

The top economic posts have gone to people who favor market liberalization, and Barroso signals he’ll proritize “economic reform.” This represents a break with the past. Previous commission’s were more completely non-partisanpolitical. The leftwing parties dissed Barroso.

So, what do y’all think?

Barroso new EC head.

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As you may have heard by now, Portuguese prime minister Jos? Manuel Dur?o Barroso will be the new president of the European commission. He’s a compromise candidate, after Verhofstadt, Patten and like a dozen others were rejected. Some say that’s bad, diminishing his authority, but really the only of his predecessors that weren’t a compromise was Prodi, and that went real well didn’t it?

Another national high level politician, not a commissioner as some had speculated and/or wished for. Prodi’s initial problems had a lot to do with a lack of knowledge of how things worked in Brussels, but Delors and Juncker, also without Brussels experience. didn’t have that problem IIRC, and Prodi were both mediocre for all of his term (Juncker too.)

He’s quite rightwing, a departure from a a quarter century of center-leftists, which will probably make a difference. But the EC is a collective, and the president is under a lot of other constraints, so don’t know how significant. But a deemphasizing of some parts of the agenda in favor of others, certainly.

Atlanticist, was at the Azores with Bush, Blair and Aznar. Has attracted a lot of commentary, but the president has little influence there. I think if anything it illustrates that the transatlantic relationsship is not that important a issue for the EU, and doesn’t drive conflicts. Americans persist in viewing Euro politics in in terms of who’s ‘pro-US’, ‘anti-US’. Am still glad it wasn’t Verhostadt.

CW is that he’s made a good job as PM. Budget rot, avoided the usual Eurozone deficit rot. (Actually it’s only the big countries.)

“Gradual federalist.” Not as ardent as Verhofstadt thankfully. I do want someone who represents his institution forcefully, though maybe not as succesfully as Delors.

“Tenacity, not charisma” says FT. Seems fine for this job. “Unbending reputation” says AP, ie consistently budget hawk and pro-Iraq war in the face of much opposition. Good I guess?

Will Barroso do a better job? Will he even take back some of the authority the EC has lost ocver the last decade? From what little i know, cautious optimism may be justified. But really, no idea. Prodi’s personal qualities that served him well as PM turned out to be the wrong ones for this job. Barroso is much less known than Prodi was then, so how would I know?

Re the last question the weakening of the commission is due to larger forces than Prodi and Juncker’s various failings, and Delors success was really mostly Kohl and Mitterand’s success, so you can argue the’yve gotten a bum rap, but I think they were fairly unimpressive regardless of that, so here’s hoping Barroso will be an improveement.