Newly elected Borrell set to land top Parliament position

By Martin Banks

Date: 08/07/04

SPANISH MEP Josep Borrell is on course to become the next president of the European Parliament, even though he has only just been elected to the assembly.

The 57-year-old was this week chosen as the Socialist candidate for the presidency and, under a deal expected to be confirmed next week between Parliament's two biggest political groups, the European People's Party (EPP-ED) and the Socialists (PES), Borrell would occupy the post for the first half of the next legislature.

EPP-ED leader Hans-Gert Pöttering would then take over for the final two-and-a-half years.

The agreement is thought to be conditional on the 200-strong Socialist group backing the appointment of Portuguese former prime minister José Manuel Barroso as European Commission president.

Barroso, who needs MEPs to back his candidature, will be quizzed by PES members in a hearing next Tuesday (13 July). They will seek assurances that the Commission's president-elect, known for his strong liberal views on the economy, is sufficiently committed to a social Europe.

The Borrell-Pöttering ticket for the new five-year term still has to be confirmed in a vote by the Parliament's Strasbourg plenary on 20 July. Two days later, MEPs vote on Barroso's appointment.

A PES spokesman said: "The proposed deal is purely for the presidency and nothing else. There are no plans for a shared legislative programme."

But the 31-strong French Socialist delegation is fiercely opposed to such an agreement to share the presidency.

The third largest group, the Liberals, yesterday (7 July) nominated their own candidate, the newly elected Bronislaw Geremek, a former Polish foreign minister. He said: "The fact that I, a former dissident who fought for over 15 years to transform his country, can be a candidate for the presidency has a symbolic value."

The Greens are also considering putting forward a candidate.

The newly formed Eurosceptic Independence and Democracy group, which has 31 members, has voiced surprise at Borrell's election and has not yet given its outright support.

On Tuesday (6 July), Borrell, a former candidate for the post of prime minister, beat his only rival for the Socialist nomination, UK member Terry Wynn, by 117 votes to 66. Two other candidates, Austrian Hannes Swoboda and Slovene Borut Pahor, had earlier dropped out of the race.

Borrell will spell out his proposals for the presidency in talks with each of the main political groups over the next few days. If confirmed as the Parliament's 11th president, he will be the first newly elected MEP to hold the post since direct elections were held in 1979.

This, coupled with the Spaniard's relative lack of European experience, has led some to question his suitability for the job.

Although he was the Spanish parliament's representative on the Convention which drafted the EU constitution, Borrell has spent his entire political career in Spain. Pöttering said: "Borrell is clearly a very experienced politician but the EPP will decide its position on the presidency next week."

German centre-right member Elmar Brok, outgoing chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: "I must say I would have preferred an existing MEP, someone with more experience of the Parliament, as president.

"But I've no objections to his election and think he would be an acceptable president - providing the Socialists vote for Barroso."

Borrell's election prompted one UK Socialist MEP to claim some of his colleagues had colluded to vote against Wynn purely as a protest at British support for the US-led war in Iraq.

"It was a fix, simple as that," he said. "Spanish and French members struck a deal to keep a Briton out of the job simply because they were against the war. It stinks because it was widely accepted Wynn was the better-qualified candidate of the two."

Wynn has been an MEP since 1989 and was chairman of the budget committee in the last Parliament.

A PES insider also cast doubt on Borrell's credentials, saying: "He has no idea of how this place works - he doesn't even know the rules of procedure. I suggest he finds himself some good advisors for his cabinet."

A spokesman for the 34-strong Greens/European Free Alliance group said: "Borrell is a good enough candidate but we won't be voting for him because we oppose a deal being done behind closed doors."

However, David Harley, spokesman for Parliament's departing president, Pat Cox, said Borrell was perfectly qualified, saying: "Borrell may be a new MEP but he has done just about everything in domestic politics and has a lot of experience."

Scottish Socialist MEP David Martin remarked that it was "hardly surprising we've got a relative newcomer given that about 70% of the MEPs are new".

Meanwhile, German member Martin Schulz has been elected new Socialist group leader in succession to Spaniard Enrique Barón Crespo who has stepped down from the post.

An MEP since 1994, Schulz - the only candidate - was elected by a majority of 88%, with the remaining 12% abstaining. He hit the headlines last year when, during a Parliamentary debate, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi compared him to a Nazi camp guard.

His election means that three of Parliament's main groups - the EPP-ED (Pöttering), Socialists (Schulz) and Greens (Daniel Cohn-Bendit) - now have a German leader. Schulz said that one of his main challenges will be to "unite a party with 23 national delegations".

The Socialists have appointed seven new vice-presidents: Harlem Desir (France), Barbara Duhrkop (Spain), Robert Goebbels (Luxembourg), Magda Kosa Kovacs (Hungary), Pasqualina Napoletano (Italy), Hannes Swoboda (Austria) and Jan Marinus Wiersma (Netherlands).

Article predicts that newly elected Spanish MEP, Josep Borrell, will be elected to become the new European Parliament President on the 20 July 2004.

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