Finding a consensus candidate who would be able to patch together a working Commission has always been a huge exercise in barter. The betting season is now open, after the Council’s refusal to automatically accept one of the candidates proposed by the Parliament. Basically, the Council would have to settle on the name of the Commission boss at the summit that will close at the end of this month the Greek presidency.
After all the posturing, say internal sources, Cameron would after all be ready to accept Jean-Claude Juncker in return for the guarantee that a Brit will be Secretary-General of the Commission and that England gets the Trade, or Internal Market portfolio. Until now, the position of Secretary-General was held by Catherine Day, the tough Irishwoman, Barroso’s éminence grise. Cameron has in mind for this Robert Madelin, Director General for Communications and Technology.
This is one of the most powerful jobs, in which practically any project or initiative can be blocked or promoted.
As Commissioner, London’s candidate was, until recently, Andrew Mitchell, formerly Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons, until he resigned after losing the confidence of his colleagues following a not very dignified altercation with police. It is now again Andrew Lansley, Cameron’s former patron in the Tories’ research department.
The mood is that if the Commission president isn’t Juncker, then anybody would do, except for Martin Schulz. Hostility to Schulz seems to be the only point on which there is unanimity in the capitals. One scenario would be to ask the EPP to propose someone else, possibly the French Michel Barnier, placed second best after Juncker in the internal EPP race. One thing is certain: at the mini-summit that followed the EU elections, François Hollande made it very clear that the often heard name of Christine Lagarde was totally unacceptable to France: a former finance minister close to ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, Christine Lagarde is under investigation in her own country in the “Tapie affair”, over her role in a 2008 arbitration that awarded a massive 400 million euros state payout to controversial businessman Bernard Tapie. She was not yet charged, but appeared already in a French court… The case is tacitly kept on hold, as France doesn’t want a second diplomatic disaster after the "DSK affair” (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief), but Lagarde would clearly be a liability.
Italy seems to hesitate between Enrico Letta and Massimo D’Alema. Holland has Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the current finance minister and Eurogroup temporary boss to propose.
Belgian Karel De Gucht would like to stay on the job, but he is unlikely to be maintained; even his fellow Flemish Liberal Guy Verhofstadt is not certain to be proposed by his government, although he is also the candidate of the ALDE group in the Parliament for the presidency of the Commission. Those who seem assured to stay are the Austrian Johannes Hahn (now Regional Policy), the Croat Neven Mimica (now Consumer Protection) and possibly the Romanian Dacian Cioloș for a second mandate as Agriculture Commissioner.
Sweden seems to hesitate between the eternal Carl Bildt and Gunilla Carlsson, a former Minister for International Development Cooperation. Germans have the not very German-sounding David McAllister, the premier of Lower Saxony.
Hints from Spain are that that Miguel Arias Cañete will be proposed for Trade, a position that UK also covets. Cañete is burdened, moreover, by a controversy surrounding some sexist, macho-like remarks he made in a TV program.
A question of high concern is what will happen with the highly visible job at the helm of EU’s diplomacy, that is: who will be High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. After the Ashton disaster, capitals might want to nominate someone really competent for the job. The Danish are extremely interested in this, and the names of Helle Thorning Schmidt and Anders Fogh Rasmussen circulate.
The most confusing signals come from Poland. After a period in which it became almost assured that the present foreign minister Radosław Sikorski was certain to replace Ashton as chief of EU’s diplomacy came the cold shower of some remarks made by prime minister Donald Tusk, about Poland having also other priorities. “We would like to get a post in a place, which is key from Poland’s point of view, but also from a European one. We are also thinking of energy or competition,” said Tusk.
It is exactly in oder to avoid such damaging horse-dealing that the Americans insisted in spring to have the NATO top job going to a non-EU politician. Candid Jens Stoltenberg from Norway had the job practically imposed upon him. So desperate were the Americans to avoid European haggling around NATO that they would have given the job even to someone from Iceland, although that icy rock is governed by politicians who push locals to refuse to pay their debts.
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