The Economist and Belgium

L'Economist est toujours contre la Belgique.Tantôt, ils ont raison (quand ils dénoncent la déliquescence de "notre" politique), tantôt ils ont tort (lorsqu'ils prétendent que la Belgique va disparaître en raison de ses conflits politico-communautaires). Ici, ils ont plutôt raison parce qu'ils font référence à l'imbroglio institutionnel belge.

illustration by Peter Schrank

We are all Belgians now

Nov 26th 2009

From The Economist print edition

How the European Union's horse-trading over top jobs reflects murky coalition-building

EUROPE, it is said, must resist the temptation to become a giant Switzerland: ie, a smug, rich, insular place. But judging by the antics of European leaders as they filled two top European Union jobs on November 19th, the club faces another danger altogether: becoming a giant Belgium.

Lots of European countries indulge in shadowy coalition politics, with jobs divvied out among rival parties, but Belgium takes the biscuit. All Belgian governments are big coalitions, uniting parties that loathe one another, staffed by fixed quotas of ministers from the French- and Dutch-speaking communities (who also cannot stand each other). Democracy barely counts, as even parties thumped at the ballot box return to office. What is the link between this and the selection of Herman Van Rompuy as the first full-time president of the European Council, and of Catherine Ashton as a new foreign-policy chief? It is the European weakness for coalition politics, in which a quest for “balance” all too often trumps talent or merit.


There were winners and losers from the process that led to Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton. The losers include those hoping for EU representatives to “stop the traffic” in Washington and Beijing. Mr Van Rompuy, an ascetic sort, has been prime minister of Belgium for less than a year: his name was pushed by France and Germany as a modest conservative from a small country who would chair EU summits without overshadowing them. Lady Ashton is capable and gets on with colleagues. But she has never held elected office and has no diplomatic experience. After a career in quasi-public agencies, she became a Labour minister, going to Brussels only in 2008 to take over the trade portfolio from Peter Mandelson. After the summit, Nicolas Sarkozy of France was asked why Lady Ashton was chosen. He gave three reasons: because it was felt a woman should hold a big EU job, because a centre-left politician was needed to “balance” Mr Van Rompuy and because “our British friends” wanted the post.

Arguably, the biggest winners were the pan-European parties that unite politicians from Europe’s centre-right and centre-left. These umbrella parties, matched by parallel groups in the European Parliament, are barely known to the voters. They strain credibility as ideological alliances. The centre-left Party of European Socialists (PES) unites ex-communists from eastern Europe with Nordic social democrats. Yet most Nordic socialists are more comfortable with the free market than some nominally centre-right parties from France or Greece, which sit in the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).

Britain, as ever, is an outlier. Labour is well to the right of the PES mainstream. The Conservatives were so appalled by EPP federalism that they recently left the group. That pleased Tory Eurosceptics but waved goodbye to much influence. It is little wonder that Britain has failed to take pan-European parties seriously. Yet in early October, the EPP and PES agreed to divide the two top jobs between them, with the centre-right getting the president’s post. That ruled out Tony Blair, a Labour man, but Britain ignored this. The British “underestimated the capacity of the EPP and the PES to make their deal stick,” says one diplomat. Instead, Gordon Brown pushed Mr Blair for council president all the way to November 19th (even if, for two weeks beforehand, that support was largely tactical). Hours before the summit met, he finally dropped Mr Blair in exchange for winning the foreign-policy post.

The deal was done at a small meeting of PES leaders. The guest list reads more like a “Trivial Pursuit” question than a roll call of world leaders. It included Borut Pahor (prime minister of Slovenia, if you must ask), Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (PES president) and Martin Schulz (the group’s boss in the European Parliament), alongside better-known figures such as José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain. Mr Brown floated three names—Lord Mandelson, Geoff Hoon, a former defence secretary, and Lady Ashton. His colleagues deemed Lord Mandelson too abrasive (and he may not have been available anyway); Mr Hoon was tainted by Iraq; and they wanted a woman. So Lady Ashton it was.

Browned off
There were complications along the way. In recent weeks, sources reveal, Mr Zapatero tried to persuade Mr Brown himself to try for council president: a suggestion that overlooks Mr Brown’s air of frowning misery at most EU meetings. Many EU governments wanted Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, to have the foreign-policy job; he is clever and they wanted to harness Britain to the EU’s ambitions for a security and defence policy. But he preferred to stay in domestic politics. The European Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, promoted Lady Ashton because, as a serving commissioner, she ought to be more loyal than a newcomer. (The foreign-policy boss will answer to both the commission and national governments.)

The new Lisbon treaty has boosted pan-European parties most of all. A dull-sounding change means that an absolute majority of the European Parliament must now approve the European Commission’s president and his college of commissioners. That means all big parties must agree, giving each a potential veto. Some national leaders did not realise they “couldn’t escape” the conditions of the pan-European parties, chuckles Mr Schulz. “They understand it better now.” Talk of Britain getting the single-market portfolio was also bluff, as the parliament would have vetoed a Briton in charge of financial services.

This is a new world for national leaders used to majority government, such as Mr Brown. Others, like Mr Sarkozy, have cleverly used the threat of parliamentary hostility to kill candidates they dislike. It is a world of coalition deals, quotas and procedural ambushes. We are all Belgians now.