For the British tabloids, the World Cup that begins today might turn out to be a slightly unsettling one. Nothing to do with England’s chances against Italy (which is a Maltese obsession) and of making it at least to the quarter-finals. It’s all to do, as usual, with Germany.
The tabloids like to frame England’s and Germany’s respective chances, especially in head-to-head encounters, within a rerun of World War II. It seems they can’t not (as a minimum) hint at it. They’re Basil Fawlty without the neurotic inhibitions. And they’re notoriously not above hinting that the UK’s troubles with Brussels can be understood, basically, within the same frame, too.
This time round, the football will be getting interesting just as Europe’s national leaders head into a summit where the major posts for the next five years will be fought over and decided. One would think that, for the tabloids, it should be the perfect storm where Europe, football and British glory (and, possibly, the letdown by the UK’s present leaders, another favourite theme) all come together in one big, psychedelic diorama of invective.
Only it isn’t. There’s a snag.
Germany is being awkward. It’s behaving like a potential ally.
Currently, this year’s summit (or, at least, the run-up to the final balming theatre of unity and joint resolve) promises to be quite a fight. David Cameron, the UK’s prime minister, has taken the risk of declaring himself, very early on, against the main candidate for the presidency of the European Commission, Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker.
But, in this quarrel, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, isn’t the UK’s prime adversary. On the contrary, she’s the key ally Cameron needs. And, at the moment, she’s torn between her own instincts, which are reported to be anti-Juncker, and pressure in Germany for her to accept him.
Earlier this year, she had reluctantly committed to support Juncker and it would damage her reputation as a straight-dealing (if wily) leader if she had to backtrack on that commitment.
Cameron has, however, threatened to bring forward a UK referendum on the EU if Juncker, a committed federalist, is nominated by the Council to head the Commission. The fact that Edward Miliband’s Labour has also declared it would vote against Juncker in the European Parliament says something about the popular mood in the UK as a general election approaches.
It is unlikely that Juncker will discreetly withdraw from consideration to spare Europe a fight and Merkel an embarrassing decision, whichever way she goes. Sticking to her word and, thereby, contributing to a permanent rift between the continent and the UK, isn’t something in Germany’s interests, not least Merkel’s, who has often found a convenient ally and ‘bad cop’ partner in Cameron.
In any case, Cameron is not alone. Although the French former prime minister, Michel Rocard, last week published an article in which he said it was about time that the UK left the EU because it was wrecking Europe’s best hopes, the fact is that the leaders of the EU’s founding nations (other than Juncker’s Luxembourg, naturally) all have some reason to oppose Juncker.
Italy and France are wary of Juncker’s monetarist discipline when it comes to their management of their economies. The Netherlands is teaming up with the UK (and Sweden) in trying to forge a blocking minority to Juncker’s appointment because Holland is against ceding more national powers to Brussels, which an experienced operator with federalist convictions might manage. Belgium – or, at least, one of its European leaders, Herman van Rompuy – is also considered to be anti-Juncker.
But it’s Germany that has the swing vote.
How did Juncker manage to get in pole position despite so many misgivings?
There can’t be ‘more Europe’ in migration policy without a corresponding increase and federalism in other areas
In part, his attractiveness and the misgivings are two sides of the same coin: he would make a strong, independent leader in the Jacques Delors mode. (Their political origins, in fact, are in the same centre-left stream of Christian Democrat thought, although Delors moved towards France’s Socialists and Juncker moved to the right of his roots in the Christian Democrat workers’ tradition.)
But the key reason is a political move that began in the Party of European Socialists, when the ambitious Martin Schulz persuaded it to nominate a candidate for the Commission’s presidency prior to the European Parliament elections.
The idea, as we know now, was to have the Commission president being selected, not just approved, by the EP.
The rationale is to combine leadership with democratic legitimacy. But, in effect, it is an attempt at a power grab by the EP at the expense of the Council of heads of State and of government.
Merkel was reluctant to endorse the idea, precisely because it robbed people like her of options. But the European People’s Party eventually endorsed the idea rather than risk being labelled undemocratic. Now, when the EPP has reconfirmed itself as the EP’s biggest party, Juncker is being endorsed even by MEPs who would disagree fundamentally with him on some key issues. The reason is that endorsing him would greatly strengthen the power of the EP generally.
The arguments about Juncker’s democratic legitimacy are actually weak. His name was not on any ballot; he and his counterparts merely behaved as though it was. His campaigning in many member states was perfunctory, a lightning visit (although not in Germany, which partly explains why support for him is strong there).
The debates with his main rival, Schulz, were dreary affairs, on secondary media outlets, with miserable audience ratings. Only 43 per cent voted in the EP elections, the result of which saw Juncker’s party win fewer than 30 per cent of the seats, more than expected but hardly a symbol of ringing European-wide endorsement.
It’s not really persuasive, therefore, to see Cameron vs Juncker as the battle between the political fixers and the democrats. The very idea of settling the choice of Commission president via the EP election itself emerged out of a smoke-filled room. So did the candidates.
What we’re seeing, rather, is a clash between two contrasting ideas of what Europe needs to fix itself, strengthen its leadership while being responsive to democratic pressures.
Cameron represents the view that it’s only nation states that can provide all of those things robustly. Juncker stands for the conviction that, in today’s world, only federal economies (apart from China’s) are strong, successful economies – and ‘more Europe’ is needed to safeguard quality of life and effective economic governance.
Neither side is obviously right or wrong since each view depends on political analysis of how a globalised world actually operates. Juncker has attracted support from many leading European sociologists because – convinced that Europe must move towards becoming a United States of Europe – they back the EP’s power play as the first step in this direction.
Malta, meanwhile, is obsessed with ‘more Europe’ merely as a solution to the immigration problem, without seeing that one cannot realistically have ‘more Europe’ in migration policy without a corresponding increase and federalism in other areas. Until we begin to assess the consequences of federalism fully, we cannot properly assess our best interests on the migration front.
ranierfsadni@europe.com