Giscard: Iraq shows need for president

Date: 13/03/03

THE European crisis over Iraq highlights the need to have a stable president of the Council, according to Convention chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

In behind-closed-doors talks with party leaders in the European Parliament, Giscard said that the divisions over how to deal with Iraq have been exacerbated because of the inherent weaknesses of a Union led by a rotating presidency.

However, senior Convention members claim the former French president is seeking to exploit the present crisis to push his long-held personal view that the EU needs a powerful head of the Council.

The big member states - France, Germany, the UK and Spain - support this idea which is, however, opposed by their smaller counterparts, who would prefer to see the European Commission wielding more power over foreign affairs.

Giscard argues that the present rotating system, where member states take it in turn to hold the EU tiller for six months, does not allow for vitally-needed "anticipation in its common foreign and security policy [CFSP]".

"This crisis has been spread over three presidencies now," Giscard said after the 28 February Convention plenary. "The [present] system does not allow us to engage in a global reflection."

A senior Convention official supports Giscard's stance. "We would not have arrived at such a dramatic split [in Europe] over Iraq if successive presidencies in the last couple of years had not neglected the problem.

"It was known that EU countries, in particular France and the UK, had different views on how to deal with Iraq. However, nothing was done to try to liken their stances before the problem erupted.

"Maybe we would have had the present divisions anyway," he admits, "but no EU presidency ever tried to bridge the gap in perceptions."

The view is backed by a Council of Ministers' insider. "The political chaos related to Iraq is very much imputable to cowardly presidencies which did not want to tackle this hot potato in the past. It has been a latent problem for a while, but neither the Danish nor the Spanish presidency, who were at the Union's helm in 2002, dared to touch it.

"Their reasoning was very straight-forward: 'it will not be a problem during our six-month presidency, so let the next [presidency] tackle it'," he said.

However, a senior Convention member said Giscard was wrong to push for a Council president, at the expense of giving the Commission more powers over foreign affairs: "Who else would be able to 'anticipate' better than the Commission, which relies on such a solid administration and on a broad network outside the Union?"

In addition, MEP Andrew Duff, also a Convention member, claims the present crisis increasingly indicates that an integrated presidency - with the Commission's president chairing the European Council - is the right answer.

The European crisis over Iraq highlights the need to have a stable president of the Council, according to Convention chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.