Former Irish premier to build bridges with America

Date: 22/07/04

IRISH former prime minister John Bruton will be named as the European Commission's new Washington envoy after the summer break, senior sources have confirmed.

His appointment - which will probably be endorsed by the College of commissioners at its 25 August meeting - is part of a strategy to improve EU-US relations and finally draw a line under the recriminations sparked by the war in Iraq.

Traditionally, the Union's representative in the American capital has been a career civil servant - the present incumbent Günter Burghardt had previously spent 30 years in the Commission's headquarters in Brussels. By selecting a former head of government, the Commission is seeking to increase the profile of the EU among key US decision-makers.

But the appointment is certain to provoke some criticism, given that it is being made in the final stages of the current Commission's mandate and is being presented as a fait accompli to the executive that will begin its term just two months later. Sources say Commission President Romano Prodi and Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, were eager to have Bruton appointed before the new EU executive under José Manuel Barroso takes up its duties in November.

Another former prime minister, Danish Socialist MEP Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, says: "The Prodi Commission is coming to the end of its mandate and allowing the new Commission to make this decision would have made for a far more democratic and legitimate appointment. I have nothing against John Bruton and I would not want to interfere in the way the Commission makes such appointments. However, such an important and prestigious appointment would have been better left to the incoming Commission."

Jens-Peter Bonde, veteran Eurosceptic deputy and joint leader of the Independence and Democracy group in the Parliament, offers a similar view: "Bruton is a good enough candidate but this is a decision which should clearly have been made by the incoming Commission."

Nevertheless, the imminent appointment is seen by many pundits as a chance to have the Union taken more seriously on Capitol Hill.

"It would be a recognition of the fact that Europe has been extremely bad at getting its case across to American audiences," says Mark Leonard, director of the UK-based Foreign Policy Centre. "The EU is practically invisible in Washington. There's also a huge amount of anti-European rhetoric in Washington that is not effectively countered by national diplomats. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about what the EU is about - even among people who are experts on Europe, because they have basically just dealt with NATO.

"The appointment of an Irish person allows the Commission to tap into the positive feeling most Americans have towards Ireland. His profile is right. He comes from an English-speaking country and has the status to be taken seriously. He also has quite a lot of experience of dealing with Americans over the years. If John Kerry wins the presidential election, then presumably he will know many of the figures in his administration as they will have been in the Clinton administration."

Bruton was taoiseach (premier) in 1994-97, a period that straddled Bill Clinton's two terms in office. During that period, he liaised regularly with the Clinton administration on the Irish peace process, laying some of the groundwork for the 1998 Good Friday agreement aimed at ending three decades of political violence in Northern Ireland. In his recently published autobiography, My Life, Clinton hails that accord, brokered by his emissary George Mitchell, as his crowning foreign policy achievement.

However, Bruton's handling of the peace process encountered some domestic criticism. His outspoken antipathy to militant advocates of Irish unity was considered by many to be unhelpful at a time of frantic behind-the-scenes efforts to secure a ceasefire from the Irish Republic Army (IRA).

Bill Drozdiak, executive director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels, describes Bruton as an "excellent choice".

"He is known to have a very gregarious personality. And as a former Irish prime minister, he will have doors open to him on both sides of Congress - both with Republicans and Democrats. This is very important as Congress deals with a lot of contentious issues on transatlantic ties. And yet the vast majority of congressmen don't realize how important Europe is," he said.

"The transatlantic economy is worth $2.5 trillion [€2 trillion]. So whether you're a Congressman from North Carolina or Oklahoma, you have to realize that Europe matters a lot to your constituency."

A wealthy landowner, Bruton was first elected to Dáil Eireann, the lower house of the Irish parliament, in 1969 as a candidate for the centre-right Fine Gael party. He was just 22 at the time.

His political career has been pockmarked with controversy. As the finance minister in a ruling coalition in 1981-82, his attempt to introduce a tax on children's shoes caused the government to collapse. His political foes have also rarely tired of recalling how he remains the only finance minister in Irish history to fail to secure a parliamentary majority for an annual budget.

Becoming Fine Gael leader in 1990, he stayed on the opposition benches until the botched handling of a child abuse scandal in the Catholic church triggered the resignation of then taoiseach Albert Reynolds in 1994. The crisis provided a unique opportunity for Bruton: he became taoiseach without a general election being called.

The most serious scandal during his term in office - the resignation of then minister Michael Lowry after it was disclosed that a prominent businessman had paid for an extension to his house - seems tame compared to the revelations that have since been made about Fianna Fáil, the party led by Bertie Ahern.

Bruton's stint as taoiseach coincided with the 1997 Irish EU presidency which ushered in the Stability and Growth Pact, the rules that underpin the single currency. As the new millennium dawned, his party was beset by some in-fighting. After losing a motion of no-confidence in Fine Gael, he resigned as its leader in early 2001. Yet he was soon able to develop his credentials as a statesman when he secured a post on the praesidium, the inner circle of the future of Europe Convention which drafted the EU constitution.

Public relations experts have advised Bruton not to laugh in public, because he has a great rumbling guffaw which is easily lampooned. The satirical radio show Scrap Saturday dubbed him Yogi Bruton, comparing his chuckle to that of the famous cartoon bear.

Major feature. The appointment of former Irish Prime Minister, John Bruton, as the new EU Ambassador to Washington is part of a determined effort to improve EU-US relations.

http://www.eeas.europa.eu/us/index_en.htm http://www.eeas.europa.eu/us/index_en.htm

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