Post by FaithWalker on Jan 7, 2008 17:01:26 GMT -6
LISBON: It took the European Union a decade of wrangling to agree on a new set of institutions to cope with its enlargement to 27 members and give it a stronger voice in the world. Now the question is: will they work?
Up to a point, is the initial answer from EU insiders, who predict a series of power struggles among the bloc's new top officials and parliaments.
"They will have to work, and we will have to make them work, because no one is going to want to go through the agony of another institutional reform for at least a decade," said a senior European Commission official after Friday's deal on a reform treaty replacing the defunct EU constitution.
The overwhelming mood at the Lisbon summit which approved the draft treaty was one of relief at ending a crisis of confidence opened when French and Dutch voters rejected a proposed EU constitution in 2005.
The leaders shrugged off questions about how the new structures will work and how long they may last.
"I think we should wait a decade before we make any changes," Polish President Lech Kaczynski told reporters.
"What we've been through in the last five months should remove anyone's taste for institutional issues. I'm not saying this is the last (EU treaty) but ... it will probably last longer than others," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, making an exception for the EU's founding Treaty of Rome.
Some of the reforms, such as the simpler, more democratic voting system and a smaller European Commisison, do not even take effect until 2017 and 2014 respectively.
The new institutional balance could prove uneasy.
By establishing a long-term president of the European Council and a stronger foreign policy chief, the EU has created two top officials who will almost inevitably vie for power with the president of the European Commission and with the leaders of the big member states, insiders say.
The carve-up of the new positions between big and small states, northern and southern Europe, and left and right-wing parties promises some epic struggles in the next two years.
Sarkozy hinted on Friday he could imagine former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the first president of the European Council, and may support Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term as Commission president.
National parliaments are bound to want to flex their muscles by using their new right to send back to the Commission draft EU legislation they consider infringes member states' prerogatives.
As the midnight haggling over the timing and parliamentary scrutiny of the nomination of the foreign policy chief showed, the European Parliament is already vying with governments over who will supervise the High Representative, who will also be a vice-president of the Commission.
The treaty did not resolve the question of who speaks for the world's biggest trading bloc at the top tables of the world economy, in the Group of Seven industrialised powers, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
For the moment, four EU states -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- plus the EU presidency, the European Commission, the chairman of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers and the European Central Bank, all sit at the G7 table, to the exasperation of their U.S., Japanese and Canadian interlocutors.
Underlining their role as a de facto directorate on economic and foreign policy issues, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement at the summit on a response to the recent financial markets turmoil.
The text was negotiated behind the backs of even major EU partners. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi told a news conference he had heard nothing about it.
Britain and France will keep their coveted veto-bearing permanent seats in the U.N. Security Council, but the EU foreign policy chief will have a right of audience there to represent the EU's common foreign and security policy.
Eurosceptics in Britain and the most enthusiastic federalists in Brussels say that is the first step towards an eventual single EU seat on the world's law-making top body.
In the short-term, it is likely to engender turf skirmishes with the big European powers about primacy in foreign policy.
Meanwhile Spain, Italy and Poland continue to bridle at the dominance of Britain, France and Germany, for example in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
(additional reporting by Marcin Grajewski, Ingrid Melander, Francesca Piscioneri and Yves Clarisse)
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Up to a point, is the initial answer from EU insiders, who predict a series of power struggles among the bloc's new top officials and parliaments.
"They will have to work, and we will have to make them work, because no one is going to want to go through the agony of another institutional reform for at least a decade," said a senior European Commission official after Friday's deal on a reform treaty replacing the defunct EU constitution.
The overwhelming mood at the Lisbon summit which approved the draft treaty was one of relief at ending a crisis of confidence opened when French and Dutch voters rejected a proposed EU constitution in 2005.
The leaders shrugged off questions about how the new structures will work and how long they may last.
"I think we should wait a decade before we make any changes," Polish President Lech Kaczynski told reporters.
"What we've been through in the last five months should remove anyone's taste for institutional issues. I'm not saying this is the last (EU treaty) but ... it will probably last longer than others," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, making an exception for the EU's founding Treaty of Rome.
Some of the reforms, such as the simpler, more democratic voting system and a smaller European Commisison, do not even take effect until 2017 and 2014 respectively.
The new institutional balance could prove uneasy.
By establishing a long-term president of the European Council and a stronger foreign policy chief, the EU has created two top officials who will almost inevitably vie for power with the president of the European Commission and with the leaders of the big member states, insiders say.
The carve-up of the new positions between big and small states, northern and southern Europe, and left and right-wing parties promises some epic struggles in the next two years.
Sarkozy hinted on Friday he could imagine former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the first president of the European Council, and may support Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term as Commission president.
National parliaments are bound to want to flex their muscles by using their new right to send back to the Commission draft EU legislation they consider infringes member states' prerogatives.
As the midnight haggling over the timing and parliamentary scrutiny of the nomination of the foreign policy chief showed, the European Parliament is already vying with governments over who will supervise the High Representative, who will also be a vice-president of the Commission.
The treaty did not resolve the question of who speaks for the world's biggest trading bloc at the top tables of the world economy, in the Group of Seven industrialised powers, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
For the moment, four EU states -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- plus the EU presidency, the European Commission, the chairman of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers and the European Central Bank, all sit at the G7 table, to the exasperation of their U.S., Japanese and Canadian interlocutors.
Underlining their role as a de facto directorate on economic and foreign policy issues, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement at the summit on a response to the recent financial markets turmoil.
The text was negotiated behind the backs of even major EU partners. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi told a news conference he had heard nothing about it.
Britain and France will keep their coveted veto-bearing permanent seats in the U.N. Security Council, but the EU foreign policy chief will have a right of audience there to represent the EU's common foreign and security policy.
Eurosceptics in Britain and the most enthusiastic federalists in Brussels say that is the first step towards an eventual single EU seat on the world's law-making top body.
In the short-term, it is likely to engender turf skirmishes with the big European powers about primacy in foreign policy.
Meanwhile Spain, Italy and Poland continue to bridle at the dominance of Britain, France and Germany, for example in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
(additional reporting by Marcin Grajewski, Ingrid Melander, Francesca Piscioneri and Yves Clarisse)
Link