Power vacuum at the heart of Europe?

Date: 20/04/2000

Theories abound as to the reasons for the renewed sniping at Commission President Romano Prodi, with some claiming that the loveless relationship between France and Germany's current leaders is largely to blame. Simon Taylor reports

After the manhunt for possible conspirators against European Commission President Romano Prodi failed to turn up any suspects, the search quickly began for a possible motive for the victimless crime.

The theory which has quickly gained the most currency is that a leadership deficit at the heart of the EU is the cause of Prodi's current troubles.

Those who favour this explanation argue that the loveless relationship between German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac is no substitute for the passion of the Kohl-Mitterrand era, depriving the champions of European integration with the spark traditionally provided by the Franco-German alliance. Lacking support from Berlin and Paris, Prodi has been condemned to float policy ideas which Union leaders all too often shoot down in flames. Hence the impression that their love affair with Prodi has come to a sudden end.

But, as usual, the reality behind the media flurry is more complicated.

There is no doubt that the impetus which France and Germany have given to constructing the European house ever since the EU was founded is not as strong as it was. The days when Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand would agree things which went against their national interest for the sake of European integration are gone.

Possibly the deciding moment came when the German public had to be forcibly convinced to give up their beloved deutschmark and learn to love the euro. That change of mood infected attitudes towards Germany's huge share of the Union budget burden, leaving Schröder with no option but to demonstrate forcibly that he was fighting to get his fellow taxpayers' money back.

The bruising debate in Berlin last year over the Agenda 2000 deal exposed differences between the EU's two biggest players over the cost of running the bloc - and especially its farm policy, which is heavily weighted in favour of France's highly commercial farmers.

Schröder has shown little of the enthusiasm for the Union which his predecessor had, and none of his vision. Meanwhile, Chirac and French Premier Lionel Jospin have been preoccupied with scoring political points off each other in the run-up to their country's presidential elections rather than driving the EU forward.

But it would be a mistake to pronounce the Franco-German alliance dead just yet. French diplomats point out that despite the chillier atmosphere between Berlin and Paris, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and his French counterpart Hubert Védrine have set up special bilateral working groups to discuss the key challenges facing the Union in the next couple of years such as enlargement and the constitutional reforms currently being discussed at the Intergovernmental Conference.

But even if they succeed in resuscitating the alliance, the prospect of taking in new countries will reopen the wounds left by the Agenda 2000 battle, despite claims that the Berlin summit settled the questions raised by enlargement about sharing the budget burden and agricultural reform.

Despite its fears about immigration from the east and an accompanying racist backlash, Germany has a greater strategic interest in enlargement than France, where the prospect of nearly doubling the number of farmers in the EU prompts fears of more radical farm policy reform.

Since the fervour went out of the Franco-German relationship, nothing has emerged to fill the vacuum in political leadership which this has left.

Some commentators have pointed to the Anglo-Saxon flavour of last month's Lisbon summit, with its embrace of new technologies and liberalisation to close the Union's job-creation gap on the US, as proof of emerging UK leadership in Europe. But despite Blair's success in fostering close relationships with his Spanish counterpart José Maria Aznar and Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, insiders dismiss claims that the British premier has forged a new alliance in Europe to replace the Paris-Berlin axis. "There may be some areas where the UK and Spain or the UK and Italy have things in common, but there are no global couples," said one French official.

Although diplomats acknowledge Blair's impressive achievement - with Chirac - in launching the campaign to give the EU an independent security and defence capability, they insist that the UK leader cannot hope to set the tone in Europe while his country remains outside the euro zone.

The lack of obvious political capital for Prodi to fall back on in times of trouble has fuelled suspicions in Brussels that Union governments are trying to exploit the president's weak position to take back powers from the Commission.

These fears are focusing on the newly-strengthened Council of Ministers, where Javier Solana - a former foreign minister and ex-NATO secretary-general - is gaining an increasingly strong role in the foreign policy field. Added to that, his feisty deputy Pierre de Boissieu stands accused of seeking to downgrade the Commission's powers to boost the Council's importance.

Nevertheless, even small member states which see a strong Commission as the best way to defend their interests against their bigger neighbours have willingly signed up to an increase in Solana's powers, recognising the advantages that better policy coordination in the Balkans can bring.

Senior Commission officials dismiss suggestions that there is some grand plan afoot to rein in the EU executive. "Turning the Commission into the secretariat of the Council is completely out of the question," says one. "That may be De Boissieu's personal view, but it is certainly not the view of the French government. No one in the IGC is calling for a reduction in the role of the Commission."

Insiders are quick to point out that even those areas where member states have traditionally preferred to cooperate on an intergovernmental basis, such as justice and home affairs, are gradually being brought under the Commission's umbrella.

"Having done most of the work on economic integration, we are now touching on areas like justice and defence which are the heart of national sovereignty," says one. "It is only natural that people are cautious. But over the last 30 or 40 years, there have been so many things that started out on an intergovernmental basis which are now Community matters because the Community has the right structures to handle these things."

The explanation within the Commission for the current sniping against Prodi and doubts about his grip on power is that the Union is marking time, working steadily on issues of major importance for the future but which have little resonance in the public domain, like internal reform.

Senior officials maintain that it is this which lays the Commission open to media speculation about plots and coups. "It is a quiet phase, although lots of things are in gestation like enlargement, the IGC, China and the WTO," says one.

Insiders add that the rumour factory is also being fuelled by the institution's lack of self-confidence in the wake of the crisis which brought down former President Jacques Santer's team last year. "The Commission is still demoralised, so there is a lot more disloyalty around.

You can go to any dinner party in town and hear officials criticising somebody else," says one.

But this argument is not entirely convincing. The public perception of the president as an amiable academic who approaches Commission business like a university seminar is hard to shake off. Officials admit that Prodi has not turned out to be the technocratic manager Union leaders though they were getting. Instead, not surprisingly for an ex-prime minister of a large member state, he has acted like a head of state himself, making some hapless forays into foreign policy issues - most notably, the Gadaffi incident, which came back to haunt him at the EU-Africa summit in Cairo earlier this month.

Despite his weaknesses - of which public presentation is probably the most glaring - there is no question at this stage of Union leaders trying to depose the avuncular president. Given the cost to Union business of the lost time between the last Commission resigning and the new one being appointed, and the damage done to the EU's image as a whole by last year's crisis, no one has any interest in trying to replace him.

But insiders insist the Prodi Commission must master the art of stamping out bushfires before they take hold. Otherwise, they warn, the perception that Prodi has lost his grip on the institution could eventually cost him his job.

Major feature. Theories abound as to the reasons for the renewed notesing at Commission President Romano Prodi, with some claiming that the loveless relationship between France and Germany's current leaders is largely to blame.