barber,_t_-_the_appointments_of_herman_van_rompuy_and_catherine_ashton

8/7/2019 Barber,_T_-_The_Appointments_of_Herman_van_Rompuy_and_Catherine_Ashton

1/13

The Appointments of Herman van Rompuy andCatherine Ashtonjcms_2093 55..68

TONY BARBERFinancial Times Bureau Chief, Brussels

Introduction

On 19 November 2009, heads of state and government of the European Unionnamed Herman van Rompuy as the first full-time President of the EuropeanCouncil and Baroness Catherine Ashton as the EUs new High Representativefor Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In the three weeks leading up to thedinner in Brussels at which the leaders announced their decisions, the selec-tion of van Rompuy had become a virtual certainty. The choice of Ashton,however, took aback even the nominee herself, who made no secret of hersurprise that she had suddenly been elevated to one of Europes highest-profile political posts (Palmer, 2009).

Each appointment drew praise and criticism, though not in equal quantities.Van Rompuy, a Flemish Christian Democrat who had served as Belgiumsprime minister since December 2008, was regarded by Europes political andbureaucratic elites as a shrewd, thoughtful politician deeply committed to theideal of European integration and well-suited to the task of forging a consen-sus among national leaders sitting in the European Council. His multilingualskills and economic policy expertise were attractive qualities, and many were

impressed by his apparent success over the previous 11 months in calmingtensions between Belgiums francophone and Flemish-speaking communi-ties. In addition, policy-makers in many parts of the EU 20 of whose 27countries have populations of less than 17 million found it reassuring thathe was from a small Member State and therefore unlikely to ride roughshod

JCMS 2010 Volume 48 Annual Review pp. 5567

2010 The Author(s)Journal compilation 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,USA


2/13

over the interests of their nations. There were some misgivings, however,

about van Rompuys relative lack of experience of international affairs atthe highest level.

Ashton, a former treasurer of Britains Campaign for Nuclear Disarma-ment and former chairwoman of Hertfordshire health authority, was widelyrecognized as having performed competently after she replaced PeterMandelson as EU Trade Commissioner in October 2008. Nevertheless shewas a little-known personality even in her own country, she was not a foreignpolicy specialist or a talented linguist, and she appeared significantly lesswell-qualified for the job of High Representative than her predecessor, JavierSolana, who had served as Spains foreign minister for three years and Natosecretary-general for four years before he took up the EU post in 1999.Moreover, the circumstances of Ashtons appointment raised concerns that ithad been inspired less by an appreciation of her abilities than by pressurefrom political party groups in the European Parliament, and by the need ofother EU leaders to repay Britains Labour government for its reluctantdecision to sacrifice the ambitions of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, tobecome the first full-time European Council President. In choosing van

Rompuy and Ashton, EU leaders left themselves open to the criticism thatthey had been too unambitious and allowed political horse-trading to triumphover merit even if it was true, as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germanypointed out, that characters can grow into jobs.1

I. Raising the EUs Global Profile

The 19 November appointments were the high point of a six-month transitionperiod in which the EU renewed and reshaped its institutions by holdingelections to the European Parliament, deciding who should be EuropeanCommission President for the five years from 2010 to 2015, and adoptingthe Lisbon Treaty on institutional reform. The structure and membership ofthe new 27-member Commission, which eventually took office in February2010, was also mapped out in the closing months of the year. Each of thesedevelopments played its part in the decision to nominate van Rompuy andAshton for the two high-level jobs.

Yet the appointments were also the culmination of a much longer phase of

diplomatic negotiation and political struggle over the EUs future whoseorigins lay in the collapse of European communism in 198991, the onset ofglobalization and the increasing weight in the world political and economicorder of countries such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, South Korea and

1 Deutsche Welle online, 20 November 2009.

56 TONY BARBER

2010 The Author(s)Journal compilation 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


3/13

South Africa. The EU, having started life in the 1950s as a coal and steel

community and proceeded by fits and starts to the creation of a commonagricultural policy, a single market and a single currency, contained 15members at the turn of the millennium. Its decision to go ahead with itsbiggest ever enlargement by adding 12 more countries, all but two fromcentral and eastern Europe, strengthened the perception that the Unionneeded a substantial modernization of its decision-making procedures. More-over, the spread of globalization and the emergence of new, unconventionalsecurity threats dramatized by the 11 September 2001 attacks on the UnitedStates deepened the conviction of European policy-makers that the EUcould no longer afford to stand on the margins of world politics (Hix, 2005,p. 397). As EU leaders put it in the Laeken Declaration: Now that the coldwar is over and we are living in a globalized, yet also highly fragmentedworld, Europe needs to shoulder its responsibilities in the governance ofglobalization. The role it has to play is that of a power resolutely doing battleagainst all violence, all terror and all fanaticism, but which also does not turna blind eye to the worlds heart-rending injustices (European Convention,2001).

One step had already been taken with the establishment in the 1997Amsterdam Treaty of the post of foreign policy High Representative, anaction reflecting the EUs concern that the 199195 wars of the Yugoslavsuccession had exposed severe weaknesses in the unity and effectiveness ofEuropean foreign policy (Peterson, 2008, pp. 21314). A second, more wide-ranging initiative was the establishment of a Convention on the Future ofEurope, which met from February 2002 to July 2003 under the chairmanshipof Valry Giscard dEstaing, the former French president. The conventionproduced a draft constitutional treaty for the EU which proposed the appoint-

ments of a full-time European Council President for a two-and-a-half yearterm, renewable once, and a Union foreign affairs minister who would simul-taneously serve as a Commission vice-president (Avery, 2009).

Agreement on the full-time Presidency, intended partly to displace thetraditional system of six-monthly rotating national presidencies, was noteasily reached. The leading advocates of the change were the ABC trio Prime Minister Jos Mara Aznar of Spain, Blair and President JacquesChirac of France. As representatives of large EU states, they were disturbed

by the prospect that, after the forthcoming round of enlargement, the Councilwould be led too often by small countries such as Cyprus, Latvia and Maltathat lacked the resources to give the EU the dynamic international pre-sence it required. Conversely, smaller states and those with a less inter-governmentalist vision of the EU were concerned that a powerful full-timepresidency would curtail their influence and hobble progress towards deeper

THE APPOINTMENTS OF HERMAN VAN ROMPUY AND CATHERINE ASHTON 57



4/13

European integration. As a compromise, it was decided to retain the rotating

Presidency but to exclude foreign affairs from its competency.The attempt at redesigning the EUs institutions came to a shuddering

halt in May and June 2005 when voters first in France and then in theNetherlands rejected the draft constitutional treaty. The No votes had littleto do with the proposals to equip the EU with a full-time Presidency and aforeign minister, but the rejections forced the abandonment of the treaty andits replacement by a new document, ultimately to be known as the LisbonTreaty, signed in December 2007 (EUR-Lex, 2008). Among the changeswas the substitution of the title of High Representative for that of ForeignMinister, an alteration aimed at removing any impression, however mis-guided, among the European public that the EU was heading in the directionof a pan-European government.

EU leaders were determined, however, to preserve the substance of theforeign ministers job. In particular, they left intact the proposal that the HighRepresentative should become a more powerful figure by taking over threeareas of responsibility those handled by Solana, those of the foreign ministerof the country holding the rotating Presidency, and those of the EU External

Relations Commissioner, who from November 2004 to December 2009 wasBenita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria. Moreover, as suggested by the EuropeanConvention, the High Representative would simultaneously hold the postof Commission Vice-President. It was widely remarked during Ferrero-Waldners tenure of office that EU policy-making had often been renderedincoherent by the rivalry between two separate foreign policy bureaucracies inher Commission office and Solanas office in the Council of Ministers (Grant,2009a).Theincoherencewasapttospreadwhenacountryindomesticpoliticalturmoil and possessing little or no experience of managing EU affairs held the

rotating Presidency, a point of which national governments were to becomeacutely aware during the Czech Republics six-month term in the first half of2009 (Grant, 2009b).

The political and institutional shortcomings of the EUs common foreignand security policy were exposed in episodes ranging from the US-led invasionof Iraq in 2003, which produced a FrancoGerman alignment with Russia inopposition to a coalition led by Britain, Italy and Spain, to the EUs troubledefforts to form a strategic partnership with Moscow. It appeared to many

commentators that the EU was an awkward foreign and security policy actor,unable to formulate a cohesive identity or credible capabilities with which toproject itself on the world stage (Dover, 2007, p. 237). The fundamentalproblems were the division of responsibilities between the Council and theCommission, the persistence of national over European interests, and thefrequent tendency of EU activities in the fields of conflict prevention and

58 TONY BARBER



5/13

peace-building to clash with other policies in areas such as energy and trade

(EPLO, 2009).Unfortunately, the Lisbon Treaty did not put forward clear-cut solutions to

these problems. It provided no clarity on how the High Representative wasto share responsibilities with other high-level decision-makers, notably theCouncil President and the Commission President. It left undefined the struc-ture of the future External Action Service, which the High Representative wasto lead, and it skirted the issue of how the EAS was to interact with the triedand tested diplomatic services of Member States, especially those of Britain,France and Germany. It fell to Ashton, a foreign policy novice, to make a stabat clearing up the confusion (Martin, 2009).

II. Picking the Winners

The elections to the European Parliament, held on 47 June 2009,delivered a convincing victory for centre-right parties in the six largest EUcountries Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain and ensuredthat the European Peoples Party would remain comfortably the largest

party group in the new assembly. Its success reinforced the EPPs determi-nation not merely to secure a second five-year term as Commission Presi-dent for Jos Manuel Barroso, the centre-right former Portuguese primeminister, but also to achieve its long-standing goal of winning the postof full-time Council President for a senior representative of the EPPfamily (Hughes, 2008, p. 13). The EPP held the upper hand because20 of the EUs 27 Member States were ruled by centre-right parties orcoalitions.

However, the EPPs first objective proved easier than the second to attain.The EPP had thrown its weight behind Barrosos reappointment even beforethe June elections. By contrast, the socialists, the assemblys second largestgroup, had been too divided to settle on a single candidate. Socialists andother critics of Barroso succeeded in delaying his reappointment when thenew legislature convened in July, but only until 16 September, when hiscandidacy was approved by 382 votes to 219 with 117 abstentions. Therewere rather more obstacles in the path of securing the full-time CouncilPresidency for the EPP. In the first place, the job did not exist because the

Lisbon Treaty, which established it, had not yet been approved by all 27Member States. Everything depended on the outcome of an Irish referendumon the Treaty, to be held on 2 October, and on the political calculations ofPresident Vclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who was a bitter opponent ofthe Treaty but whose signature was required to complete the process of Czech




6/13

ratification. Secondly, EPP strategists faced the difficulty that the British

government was intent on promoting the chances of Blair, hardly a dyed-in-the-wool socialist but a representative of the centre-left nonetheless. TheBritish appeared confident perhaps too confident that President NicolasSarkozy of France and several other national leaders, notably in Ireland andin central and eastern Europe, looked on Blairs candidacy with sympathy.Lastly, the EPP did not, until October, have a preferred candidate of its own.Various names were aired including Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker ofLuxembourg, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands andWolfgang Schssel, the former Austrian chancellor but none stood out fromthe crowd.

Irelands approval of the Lisbon Treaty by a crushing margin of 67.1 percent to 32.9 per cent, reflecting a 20 per cent swing to the Yes camp sincethe failed referendum of June 2008, transformed the outlook by making itall but certain that the Treaty would finally come into force. Klaus put asmall spanner in the works by demanding guarantees that the Treaty wouldnot be used as a pretext for claims on Czech property from SudetenGermans expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945 or from their descendants.

These guarantees were duly provided at the European Council of 2930October in the form of a protocol that granted the Czech Republic the sameexemptions to the Treatys Charter of Fundamental Rights as those pre-viously extended to Britain and Poland. Klaus then signed the Treatyon 3 November. This set the stage for two weeks of delicate diplomaticcontacts between Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, holder of theEUs six-month rotating Presidency, and the EUs 26 other national leadersover whom to select as the full-time Council President and the new HighRepresentative.

Even before Reinfeldt initiated these contacts, however, it was evident thatBlairs prospects were rapidly fading. There were several reasons for theobjections to Blair. Some European leaders had bitter memories of hisco-operation with George W. Bush, the former US president, in launching theinvasion of Iraq, an episode that had deeply divided the EU at a time when itwas trying to strengthen its ability to speak with a common voice on foreignpolicy. Britains self-exclusion from core EU projects such as monetary unionand the Schengen border-free travel regime were another factor. The govern-

ments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands distributed a paper toother Member States in early October which set out their position that thefull-time Council President should be someone who has demonstrated hiscommitment to the European project and has developed a global vision ofthe Unions policies, who listens to the Member States and the institutions,and who is sensitive to the institutional balance that corresponds to the

60 TONY BARBER



7/13

Community method.2 It was apparent that Blair, in the opinion of the

Benelux trio, did not fit this description.No less important was the view of many EU national leaders that the

Presidency should go to a politician from a small or medium-sized countryrather than a big Member State such as Britain, France or Germany. A majorityof leaders were unhappy at the thought that a charismatic, independent-minded chief executive such as Blair might gain the Presidency instead of alower-profile, consensus-building chairman. Blair, an instantly recognizablefigure on the world stage, might have overshadowed not only most nationalheads of government but even the Commission President and the High Rep-resentative, thereby disrupting what was meant to be a carefully constructedbalance of power in the EUs institutions. The differences between the Britishgovernment and most of its EU partners on Blairs candidacy crystallized inthe final week of October. In an eye-catching remark on 25 October, DavidMiliband, the British foreign secretary, argued in favour of Blair by referringto the EUs supposed need for a high-profile Council President who wouldstop the traffic in Beijing, Moscow and Washington.3 Two days later, Junckermade plain that he regarded Blair as unsuitable and floated the possibility that

he might put forward his own name for the Presidency.4

Junckers movesmacked more of an attempt to disrupt Blairs campaign than a serious effortat self-promotion. However, it is worth bearing in mind that Luxembourgsrank as the 26th largest EU country had not stopped Junckers name fromrepeatedly cropping up in connection with the Presidency over the previous 18months, not least in Germany, where he had supporters in the chancellery aswell as the influential Bundestag foreign affairs committee.5

Blairs fate was sealed at a dinner in Paris on 28 October at whichSarkozy and Merkel, who had consistently stressed that they would unite

behind the same candidate, discussed van Rompuys presidential creden-tials. After telephoning the Belgian premier to say that they had him in mindfor the job, they received the reply that he was ready to go. 6 On 29October, only hours before the start of a European Council in Brussels,socialist party leaders in mainland Europe drove home the message thatBlairs candidacy had collapsed by informing Prime Minister GordonBrown of Britain that they had struck a deal with the EPP under which acentre-right leader would become the first full-time Council President and a

centre-left politician would inherit Solanas position. The socialists had2 EUobserver, 6 October 2009.3 The Guardian, 25 October 2009.4 Le Monde, 27 October 2009.5 Der Spiegel online, 19 October 2009.6 Le Soir, 6 November 2009.




8/13

drawn up a shortlist of six candidates for foreign policy High Represen-

tative: Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germanys outgoing foreign minister;Miguel ngel Moratinos, Spains foreign minister; Elisabeth Guigou, aformer French EU affairs minister; Alfred Gusenbauer, a former Austrianchancellor; Adrian Severin, a former Romanian foreign minister; andMiliband. This list was at once alluring and deceptive. Steinmeier, who hadsuffered a crushing defeat in September at Merkels hands in Germanysparliamentary elections, but who was then quickly selected as the SocialDemocrats leader in the Bundestag, had no interest in the job of EU HighRepresentative. Moratinos was ruled out partly because Spain was due toassume the EUs rotating Presidency in January 2010, guaranteeing Madrida prominent place in the EUs Lisbon Treaty structures from the start, butalso for the more practical reason that Joaqun Almunia, the EUs Spanishmonetary affairs commissioner, was due to be appointed to a different high-level job in the new Commission.7 Guigou was ruled out because Sarkozywas intent on securing the post of EU Internal Market Commissioner forMichel Barnier, a fellow Frenchman. No one regarded Gusenbauer orSeverin as credible candidates. In effect, Europes socialist hierarchs were

telling Brown that the job was Milibands for the taking, if he wanted it.Miliband, however, stated that he saw his future in British politics, not inan EU foreign policy post that many considered he would have filled withdistinction. Milibands decision presented the British government with thechoice either of continuing to press Blairs presidential credentials by now,a doomed endeavour or of finding a suitable candidate for High Represen-tative. Ultimately, the British government put up little resistance to the demiseof Blairs candidacy, partly because they did not regard van Rompuy asutterly unacceptable. In contrast to Jean-Luc Dehaene and Guy Verhofstadt,

two former Belgian prime ministers whom Britain had rejected as Commis-sion President in 1994, and 2004, respectively, van Rompuy was viewed inLondon as less likely to promote far-reaching schemes of EU integration sureto generate a great deal of controversy in British politics, especially ahead ofthe 2010 general election.8 As far as concerned a British candidate for HighRepresentative, however, the influence of the EUs socialist parties was onceagain substantial. Before EU leaders gathered for the 19 November dinner,Brown met his centre-left European comrades and floated the names of Geoff

Hoon and John Hutton, each a former Labour defence minister. The responsewas unenthusiastic. The appointment of a woman was deemed necessary to

7 Almunia was officially confirmed in February 2010 as Neelie Kroes replacement as CompetitionCommissioner.8 NRC Handelsblad, 19 November 2009.

62 TONY BARBER



9/13

strengthen female representation in the new Commission. Ashton was nomi-

nated to the consternation of those onlookers who doubted both her foreignpolicy skills and her ability to emerge from the shadow of Barroso, hersuperior in the future Commission hierarchy.

III. Learning the Ropes

Van Rompuy was widely credited with making a promising start in his job.In December, January and early February he made a point of visiting all 27

Member States with a view to forming a consensus on the EUs new ten-year economic reform programme, known as the Europe 2020 strategy. Healso held regular weekly meetings with Barroso and struck up a workingrelationship that was constructive, if marked by some jostling for influenceover the EUs economic agenda. The 2020 plan was duly discussed at aninformal European Council that van Rompuy convened in Brussels on 11February. The event was overshadowed to a large extent by the Greek sov-ereign debt crisis, and van Rompuy played a central role in drafting the EUstatement that promised determined and co-ordinated action, if necessary,

to safeguard financial stability in the euro area as a whole (Council,2010a). His main focus in these early months was, however, on the need forthe EU to find new sources of economic growth in order to sustain theprosperity required to pay for the European social model, with its generousarray of state-supplied public services. In public speech after speech, hereferred to the goal of at least doubling Europes annual growth rate fromthe level of 1 per cent to which it had sunk as a result both of the financialcrisis that exploded in 2007 and of longer-term weaknesses in Europespublic finances, labour markets, capacity for business innovation and edu-cation systems. His aim was partly to raise public awareness of the eco-nomic challenges ahead, partly to concentrate the minds of EU nationalleaders on the need for a co-ordinated response, and partly to set the tonefor how he intended to carry out his presidential duties. The role of thepermanent president is to enhance a shared sense of direction. Nothingmore, nothing less, he said in February (Council, 2010b). In this period itwas striking that he refrained from high-profile interventions in foreignpolicy. But he commented that he intended in time to make his presence felt

in this area, too.9

Ashtons early months in her job were less smooth, partly because shefound herself the target of repeated sniping from critics, and partly becauseshe was caught in the middle of a battle for influence over the structure of

9 Conversation with author. Brussels, 12 February 2010.




10/13

the EAS among the largest Member States and between national govern-

ments and the Commission. At an informal EU foreign ministers meetingin Crdoba, one minister spoke publicly of huge frustration among theMember States that the whole issue would be steered by the Commission.10

The suspicions of national governments were aroused when, in one ofits first administrative moves, Barrosos new Commission transferred twosections of the Directorate-General for External Relations those dealingwith international climate change talks and with energy issues to the newDirectorate-Generals for climate action and energy, respectively. The actionappeared intended to protect the Commissions control over these policyareas and keep the EAS at arms length. Member States, by contrast, regardedit as important that the EAS should have a body of experts in such mattersunder its auspices, enabling it to weld foreign policy in the traditional senseof high diplomacy with the external dimensions of internal EU policies suchas climate change and energy security. Similar tensions arose over controlover the EUs multibillion euro development aid programmes, as well as therole of the EAS vis--vis the Commission in relations with countriesapproaching EU membership and those in Europes neighbourhood, such as

Ukraine and the other five former Soviet republics grouped in the EUsEastern Partnership initiative.Behind the tensions lay a sense among Member States that Barroso was

deploying his greater political experience and knowledge of the EU bureau-cracy to outmanoeuvre Ashton. The most egregious example was Barrososappointment of Joo Vale de Almeida, a fellow Portuguese and his formerchef de cabinet, as ambassador to Washington in place of John Bruton, aformer Irish prime minister.11 Although Barroso was technically within hisrights to make the appointment, since the EAS was not yet up and running, the

action smacked of an attempt to give the EUs most prestigious ambassador-ship to a trusted ally who would be seen in Washington as having a directprivate line to the Commission President rather than being beholden toAshton as head of the new diplomatic service. Meanwhile, Ashtons personalabilities were under constant scrutiny. Her first foreign policy speeches werethin on substance, she appeared hesitant and vague on detail at her confirma-tion hearing in the European Parliament, and she was regarded in Germany ashaving been taken too closely under the wing of the British Foreign Office.12

To some extent, however, her difficulties were attributable to her lack of afully staffed private cabinetwhen she took up her job at the start of December

10 European Voice, 11 March 2010. The minister was Michael Spindelegger of Austria.11 EurActiv, 23 February 2010.12 Guardian.co.uk, 28 February 2010.

64 TONY BARBER



11/13

2009. In the view of one EU ambassador, she would have done better to wait

two months and benefit from Solanas advice and experience before sheassumed her new responsibilities.13

Conclusions

The methods by which the EU appoints its highest-level representatives arenot always a pretty sight. The clash in 1998 over whether Wim Duisenberg ofthe Netherlands should be the European Central Banks first president, and if

so for how long, was perhaps the ugliest example of the past 20 years, but evenBarrosos reappointment as Commission President in the summer of 2009left something to be desired. The process that led to the nominations of vanRompuy and Ashton said much about the fitful progress of EU integrationsince the euros launch in 1999 and the grand enlargement of 200407. On theone hand, van Rompuy and Ashton were chosen behind closed doors, withnext to no public input, by an electorate the 27 EU national leaders thatwas even smaller than the College of Cardinals that picked the successor toPope John Paul II in 2005. A last-minute attempt by Polands government to

dispel the cloud of secrecy, by inviting candidates for the full-time CouncilPresidency and post of High Representative to appear for job interviews infront of EU leaders, might have added a modest degree of transparency, but theproposal was in the event quickly brushed aside.14 On the other hand, theselection process underlined the steadily rising influence in EU affairs ofthe party political groups in the European Parliament, a trend likely to beconfirmed in coming years as the assembly wields the new powers conferredon it by the Lisbon Treaty. This influence stemmed partly from the fact that thenew High Representative, as a Commission vice-president, required confir-mation by the Parliament. But it also reflected a calculation by EU leaders thatto involve the two main party groups would underpin the political legitimacyof the leaders choices. EU heads of government and state were nonethelesscareful to keep close control over the nomination of the Council President.Their choice of van Rompuy underlined their desire for more efficient man-agement of Council business in the newly expanded Union, as well as theirpreference for a figure who would not challenge their control over the pace anddirection of EU integration. Overall, a certain contradiction was evident in the

appointments of van Rompuy and Ashton. Numerous EU politicians hadundoubtedly hoped, in the years leading up to the Lisbon Treatys ratification,that the two posts would make Europe a stronger actor on the world stage. But

13 Conversation with author. Brussels, 6 March 2010.14 EUobserver, 10 November 2009.




12/13

when push came to shove, the sheer difficulty of brokering the necessary

compromises among 27 nations ruled by governments of varying politicalcomplexions meant that the EU ended up with consensus-builders of relativelylow profile, unlikely to contest the principle of national sovereignty thatremains at the heart of so much EU decision-making.

It is open to question whether the choice of two personalities other thanvan Rompuy or Ashton would have made much difference to the way that theEU tackles its challenges at the dawn of the Lisbon Treaty era. The problemsfacing the EU are far too profound for two mere individuals and the bureau-cracies at their disposal to solve. Put simply, the two overriding challenges arethe need to strengthen Europes economic performance and the need to showthat the EU can stabilize its immediate neighbourhood on the basis of advanc-ing economic prosperity, the rule of law and democracy. Low economicgrowth rates, the crisis of the public finances, the fragility of the bankingsystem and the slow pace of the EUs structural economic reforms areproblems that van Rompuy can make no more than a modest contribution tosolving. Likewise, Ashton will be no miracle-worker in handling dossierssuch as the dysfunctional condition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the growing

independent-mindedness of Turkey and the political and economic instabilityof Ukraine. Answers to these questions, if there are any, will begin withnational EU governments and their willingness to intensify their co-operationboth with each other and with the EU institutions. The Lisbon Treaty, so EUleaders assure their publics, provides the instruments for enhancing Europeaneconomic policy co-operation and projecting the EUs influence more effec-tively across the globe. What the treaty does not contain, however, is that vitalingredient for success political willpower.

References

Avery, G. (2009) Europes Foreign Service: From Design to Delivery. EuropeanPolicy Centre Policy Brief. Available at http://www.epc.eu/TEWN/pdf/959676591_Europes%20foreign%20service.pdf.

Council of the European Union (2010a) Statement by the Heads of State or Gov-ernment of the European Union. Brussels, 11 February. Available at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/112856.pdf.

Council of the European Union (2010b) Speech by Herman van Rompuy at

the European Parliament. Brussels, 24 February. Available at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/113028.pdf.

Dover, R. (2007) The EUs Foreign, Security and Defence Policies. InCini, M. (ed.) European Union Politics (2nd edn) (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress).

66 TONY BARBER



13/13

EUR-Lex (2008) Consolidated Versions of the Treaty on European Union and

the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Official Journal of theEuropean Union, C115, 9 May.

European Convention (2001) Laeken Declaration on the Future of the EuropeanUnion. Available at http://european-convention.eu.int/pdf/LKNEN.pdf.

European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) (2009) The EU as a Global Forcefor Good: Peace at the Heart of the European External Action Service. EPLOPolicy Paper. Available at http://www.toledopax.org/uploads/EPLO_CITpax_The_EU_as_a_Global_Force_for_Good_September_2009.pdf.

Grant, C. (2009a) Making a Success of the EAS. Centre for European Reform blog.

Available at http://centreforeuropeanreform.blogspot.com/2009/05/making-success-of-eas.html.Grant, C. (2009b) Is Europe Doomed to Fail as a Power? Centre for European

Reform Essay. Available at http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/essay_905.pdf.Hix, S. (2005) The Political System of the European Union (2nd edn) (Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan).Hughes, K. (2008) Shaping Lisbons Legacy: The EUs Very Discreet Debate on

who Will Make Foreign Policy. Friends of Europe (Les Amis de lEurope),Brussels.

Martin, G. (2009) Europe Gets a Diplomatic Service. The European Institute,

Vol. 10, No. 3, Article 5.Palmer, J. (2009) Ashton Underlines EUs Significant Moment. The Guardian, 20

November. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/20/cathy-ashton-european-union.

Peterson, J. (2008) The EU as a Global Actor. In Bomberg, E., Peterson, J. andStubb, A. (eds) The European Union: How Does it Work? (2nd edn) (Oxford:Oxford University Press).



barber,_t_-_the_appointments_of_herman_van_rompuy_and_catherine_ashton

Documents