MEPs want high-level job appointments postponed

Senior MEPs are calling for a decision on appointments to top EU posts to be delayed by several months even if the reform treaty is ready to come into force in January 2009.

Provided EU leaders agree the new treaty at their summit meeting in Lisbon today and tomorrow (18-19 October), they are aiming to ratify it by the end of next year so that it could apply from January 2009.

This would mean that EU governments would have to appoint a full-time president of the European Council and a new high representative for foreign and security policy by that date.

But the three MEPs who take part in the intergovernmental conference (IGC) agreeing the new treaty text have asked for a decision on the senior appointments to be delayed until later in 2009.

German centre-right MEP Elmar Brok said that taking a decision so that the positions would be filled in January, only months before the elections to the European Parliament, would amount to a "fait accompli". He said it would be "an attempt to bypass citizens" who would be expressing their political preferences in the European elections in June 2009.

The decision should be delayed until after the June elections, Brok said, to ensure that there was political balance between the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council. Under the new treaty, government leaders have to "take into account the elections to the European Parliament" when they propose a candidate for the presidency of the Commission.

This is broadly interpreted as meaning that the president-designate would have to come from the political party having most seats in the Parliament. MEPs are now saying that the president of the European Council will have to be appointed taking into account the political profile of the president of the Commission.

"We can’t have a president of the Commission from the same party," said Brok.

MEPs are also insisting that the Parliament approves the new high representative for foreign and security policy replacing Javier Solana, who will also be a vice-president of the Commission under the reform treaty.

Andrew Duff, a UK Liberal Democrat MEP, said: "It’s key that the Solana figure is approved by us." Under the terms of an agreement between the Commission and the Parliament, MEPs hold hearings with commissioners-designate in order to decide whether to approve the new team. In 2004, they rejected Italian EU affairs minister Rocco Buttiglione as commissioner for justice and home affairs after he made controversial comments on homosexuality during the hearing.

According to the new treaty, Solana will have to step down as high representative when the reform treaty comes into force. If this took place in January 2009, MEPs want his replacement’s nomination to be only on an interim basis until the newly elected Parliament has had a chance to hold a hearing for the new official. Spanish centre-left MEP Enrique Baron Crespo, also an observer on the IGC, said: "We can’t accept that the president of the Commission accepts appointments which the European Parliament hasn’t approved."

The MEPs’ calls for a delay of key EU appointments comes amid reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to get a deal on the three top posts when France takes over the presidency of the EU in the second half of 2008. A French government spokeswoman said that if the reform treaty were to come into force in January 2009 "certain preparations would have to be made".

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said this week that the timing of these senior level appointments was a "serious issue" which had to be looked at. While under the original EU constitution, which was supposed to enter into force on November last year, the appointments would have had to be made near halfway through the mandate of the Parliament and the Commission, they would now have to be made towards the end of the two institutions’ terms of office, he said.

Barroso said that he had told leaders of the Parliament’s political groups that he was in favour of the assembly being able to influence the choice of high representative.

Senior MEPs are calling for a decision on appointments to top EU posts to be delayed by several months even if the reform treaty is ready to come into force in January 2009.