EU Credibility at Stake as Leaders’ Fight Over Top Jobs Drags On
EU Credibility at Stake as Leaders’ Fight Over Top Jobs Drags On
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The European Union’s failure to agree on who to appoint to its most senior positions triggered weeks of more political wrangling, casting a shadow over the bloc’s international reputation.
After a two-day summit didn’t even get close to a breakthrough, leaders scheduled an emergency follow-up on June 30, which will force European leaders attending the Group of 20 meeting in Japan that weekend to dash back to Brussels.
“If we don’t manage to agree next week we won’t give a very good image of Europe,” said Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, one of 28 leaders at the gathering in the Belgian capital. “This is also about the credibility of Europe.”
The EU is struggling to choose who will become the heads of the European Commission, which is the bloc’s executive wing, the European Central Bank, and the European Council, which represents national leaders. The appointees will lead the 60-year-old union into the next decade at a time when it faces huge global challenges, uncertainty over its relations with the U.S., China and Russia as well as economic weakness that could require additional monetary stimulus.
Three Eliminated
The jobs contest has pitted German Chancellor Angela Merkel against French President Emmanuel Macron, eastern Europe against west, the political right against left, fiscal hawks against doves, and governments that insist on their nominees in the top roles against those who want to focus on giving greater prominence to women.
So far, balancing all those competing priorities has proved impossible. This was already the second summit devoted almost entirely to the appointments, while smaller groups of government chiefs and lower-level officials have been trying to work out a compromise for weeks.
Even after leaders -- including outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, whose country is scheduled to leave the bloc on Oct. 31 -- worked into the early hours of Friday morning, the only decision they settled on was to eliminate the three main candidates from the contest for commission president. One diplomat joked that after months of wrangling, the EU had managed to rule out three people from its population of 500 million.
The intransigence risks making the bloc look unstable at a time when others want to exploit its disunity. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said this week that the delay in making appointments was slowing down trade negotiations, while pro-Brexit members of the British Parliament have seized on the uncertainty as proof that the U.K. has the opportunity to get a better deal from the EU under its next prime minister.
Germany vs. France
The disagreements have further exposed rifts between Merkel and Macron, the leaders of the EU’s two biggest and most powerful countries, as they have found themselves pushing for competing candidates for all of the main jobs as they try to build Europe in the own images.
“We respect each other and I can say clearly that I don’t want to take a decision against France and I think France also doesn’t want to take a decision against Germany,” Merkel said at the end of the summit. “So we have to work it out.”
Diplomats said they are braced for weeks of uncertainty. Even if the leaders manage to settle on a name in nine days’ time, it’s likely to only be the identity of the person who replaces Jean-Claude Juncker at the head of the commission. Leaders have signaled they want to settle on a name before the European Parliament returns from election recess on July 2 because their room for maneuver will be restricted if the assembly elects its own president before they reach a decision.
The new person also has to assemble a team of commissioners from each EU country and get them approved by the European Parliament before Juncker steps down on Oct. 31.
The one bright light for the EU is that this isn’t new. Discussions over its top jobs have nearly always been fraught and protracted. But almost as soon as the decisions are made, governments rally round the choices.
By Friday lunchtime in Brussels, Macron revealed how little has been done. “We’ve made progress on the top jobs by clarifying the situation and setting rules,” he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net;Stephanie Bodoni in Brussels at sbodoni@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Emma Ross-Thomas
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