When I first heard the news that EU leaders had appointed Herman van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton to the two top jobs (semi-permanent EU President and High Representative) created by the Lisbon treaty, I was both astonished and angry. The EU has been pressing for the creation of these posts for the best part of a decade. They were the centrepiece of the Lisbon treaty and its predecessor, the European constitution. We have been browbeaten into accepting the Lisbon treaty and denied the referendum we were promised. And what do EU leaders do? They choose what might be described, to borrow Trotsky’s description of Stalin, two ‘outstanding mediocrities’.
But after some more consideration, I reflected that this may be quite good for the kind of EU we want to help create. For a start, these appointments do nothing to convince me that the EU is serious about enhancing its role on the world stage, which is of course perhaps the key raison d’être of the Lisbon treaty. If there really was a collective will to give the EU serious political clout in foreign affairs and global geo-politics then surely we would have ended up with a heavyweight candidate like Tony Blair, or someone of similar profile and experience, as President of the European Council.
Similarly, there were many vastly more experienced and charismatic candidates than Baroness Ashton but she was considered someone who would not develop an independent power base. Javier Solana, her predecessor who on paper had a much weaker role, had a PhD in physics from a US university i.e. he had studied abroad, was a long-serving Spanish MP and Foreign Minister and finally NATO Secretary-General before he was deemed ready to become High Representative. Baroness Ashton has nothing remotely comparable in terms of her CV!
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