Direct elections for a EU president?
A quote from Financial Times which has an article on the big question of the Union - not the Lisbon treaty - but the name of the president of the European Council.
“The EU knows that it is far too soon to attempt direct elections for a president of the Union. The 27 members lack the common language and political identity that would make such an election work. When I once discussed the idea of a directly elected European president with a senior official in Brussels, who hails from Finland, he shook his head sorrowfully and said: “I just can’t imagine Sarkozy campaigning in Lapland.” But that is just one of many amusing possibilities: how about Berlusconi in Berkshire; or Merkel in Warsaw?”
I agree with the ’senior official’, Sarko in Lapland seeems wrong.
So what’s the president going to do?
“There is a minimalist interpretation, which would see the president of the European Council playing a relatively modest role: co-ordinating between national governments, chairing European summits and generally providing more policy continuity than the current presidency, which rotates every six months. And then there is the maximalist interpretation, which wants the new EU president to be a high-profile figure, strutting the world stage.“
So while Sarkozy in Lapland or Berlusconi {anywhere outside Italy} rules out direct election, I reckon the they both would love to be “strutting the world stage”. But then who?
“[…] any high-profile European president would be a divisive figure. For […] the president of the EU would not speak for a unified polity. In fact, European unity tends to crumble at moments of international crisis. The EU split badly when Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s; and the major EU powers were at each other’s throats over Iraq in 2003.“
It’s hard to disagree. But still, a direct election and now???
“But it is too soon to appoint a high-profile “president of Europe”. If the new president claimed to speak for the nearly 500m citizens of the Union – without a direct mandate – he would invite a backlash in Europe and humiliation in the rest of the world. The EU deserves better than that.“