whodoicall.eu

Some friends speaking to me after launching this website were positively surprised about “this great and fresh idea”. I say: thanks for the credit but our only achievment really is re-activating an argument from the Convention.

It was apparently a French (+ others) idea to install a permanent president of the European Council. These intergovernmentalist forces – joined by few other less ambitious member states and MEPs – had the intention to bring about a completely new institutional order with the abolishment or radical weakening of the Commission President. This would have been achieved by installing a strong and permanent European Council (EC) president. The Convention Presidium took up this idea of a permanent president in its drafts of late spring 2003.

However, Giscard and friends were experienced enough to propose an arrangement that somehow cares for a potentially  more useful division of tasks between the EC and Commission president. In their draft of late May 2003 they actually foresaw the opportunity for Commission and EC president to be identical (the so-called “big double-hat” – as opposed to the “small double-hat” being Vice-President of Commission and Mr/s CFSP of the Council). The French accepted this compromise arrangement then (securing an EC president) while in return the grouping of small member states accepted to have a rotating system for Commission members in which there was guaranteed pre-allocation for big member states.

A funny note on the side comes from then German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. When asked about the double heading (EC and Commission president) he replied that he has only good experience with “Doppelspitzen” in his own party

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s blog is interesting reading (in French) about important questions about the future of the EU. You know what you will get with him – a statesman-like, pro-EU approach, conscious of history, and tending towards intergovernmentalism. VGE’s comments about what the Convention on the Future of Europe did not discuss about the President of the European Council are interesting – here’s a rough translation into English:

Obviously it would have been interesting to conduct a discussion on the criteria for appointment of the future president, but the work of the European Convention was sufficiently loaded so that we could not enter into this debate. However, it was specifically stated, after lengthy discussions, that the future president could not hold a national mandate at the same time. It is desirable now to undertake further study.

So for VGE the means to select the President of the European Council are very much still open.

Thanks also to Thomas Lefebvre for posing the question to VGE, and linking to whodoicall.eu from his blog as well, so starting the debate in the French blogosphere.