Driven to distraction

Before the curtains close on a US presidency, two things start to happen. The administration finds it increasingly difficult to steer legislation through Congress, and one prominent office-holder after another jumps ship, often to wonderfully paid jobs in the private sector.

What about in Europe? To some eyes, José Manuel Barroso’s European Commission was showing signs of fraying at the edges and of losing its appetite and capacity for energetic action even before Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty on institutional reform in its June 12 referendum.

Cartoon: Clive Goddard

Two of the 27 commissioners appointed in 2004, Franco Frattini of Italy and Markos Kyprianou of Cyprus, have left Brussels this year. Of course, they could hardly have done otherwise. Each was summoned home to serve as foreign minister in a new government, and when your country calls, you usually don’t say no. 

Still, it is whispered in Brussels that more members of the Barroso Commission will pack their bags before its term ends in October 2009. Some, such as Günter Verheugen of Germany and Benita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria, seem already to be fading from sight.

Such developments do not cause the European policymaking machinery to grind to a halt, any more than they do in Washington. But they create an impression that for this Commission the busiest years are past, the hardest battles fought, and soon it will be time for the next lot to have their turn.

“We’re at the end of the reign,” says one EU diplomat with experience of the Commissions led since 1995 by Jacques Santer, Romano Prodi and Barroso respectively. “It does take some of the drive away. It’s like when your holidays are in sight. You don’t pick up new projects. You just want to get your job done before you go on vacation.” 

Doubtless this picture can be overdrawn. But the Barroso Commission is, shall we say, picking its fights carefully. On June 5, the Commission gave France a final warning for taking insufficient action to protect the great hamster of Alsace from extinction.

The Commission’s caution is dictated partly by the fact that the EU’s biggest challenge this year is to secure approval by all member states of the Lisbon Treaty. Since heads of state and government signed the treaty last December, the guiding principle in Brussels has been to do nothing that risks this goal. As Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told the European Parliament on June 4: “The first priority is to get the Lisbon Treaty ratified.”

If a solution can be found to the “Irish question” in time for the treaty to take effect as planned on January 1, it will reinforce the sense that the old world is giving way to the new – and that the Commission selected in 2004 is part of the old.

To begin with, elections to the European Parliament will be held next June, the first such vote since 2004. The window available for the assembly to convert Commission proposals into law, after national governments have had their say, is getting smaller every month.

Seen from the Commission’s point of view, it would be a major success if the Parliament passed the one measure which, more than anything else, has defined the second half of the Barroso presidency. This is a set of proposals, unveiled last January, to make the EU the world leader in fighting climate change.

But in other respects it would be unrealistic to expect too much from the Parliament in the first few months of 2009. After March, the work of the legislature elected in 2004 will effectively be done. 

Moreover, the institutional changes stemming from the Lisbon Treaty – if it is approved – will have a marked impact on the Commission, even in the short term. For the first time, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy will gain a seat on the Commission and serve as a vice-president.

The commissioner who is from the same country as the high representative will have to resign, because each country is allowed only one commissioner. If Solana, a Spaniard, were to stay on as foreign policy chief, his compatriot Joaquín Almunia would depart from his post as monetary affairs commissioner.

This would require a replacement for Almunia, even though he or she would serve for just a few months. A straightforward choice would be Ferrero-Waldner, whose own portfolio – external relations – would disappear under the new arrangements.

However, equally possible is a wider reshuffle of Commission portfolios, just as, after Frattini’s resignation, Jacques Barrot of France was switched from transport to justice and security affairs and Antonio Tajani of Italy was brought in to fill Barrot’s shoes.

Given that the entire Commission will be up for renewal later in 2009, these movements would have little significance in terms of policy initiatives. They would, however, create an unmistakable “end of term” atmosphere. They would underline that, after everyone has had a refreshing summer break, the real action will start again once the latest five-year political cycle in Brussels kicks off.

All this said, what is striking about the Barroso Commission is how, even at this advanced stage of its existence, some members are as active, or hyper-active, as they always have been.

Take Laszlo Kovacs, the taxation commissioner. In mid-May, at an otherwise humdrum EU finance ministers’ meeting, Kovacs announced that he would “present, before the end of this year, ten concrete legislative proposals on how to combat tax fraud, particularly VAT fraud”. Kovacs will also keep himself busy preparing a final report on the effectiveness – or, more accurately, the ineffectiveness – of the EU’s 2005 directive on savings taxation.

The Commission aims to produce this report by September 30. No more than a month later, Kovacs intends to propose amendments to the directive. These, he hopes, will close some of the loopholes people exploit to avoid paying tax on interest income.

Then there is Viviane Reding, the information society and media commissioner. With great determination she is trying to make telecommunications companies cut the cost of sending mobile phone text messages and using a laptop outside a customer’s home country.

She is also busy promoting a measure that would speed up adoption of the most up-to-date internet protocol, so that an almost unlimited amount of internet addresses will be available in Europe by 2010. As she points out, the new protocol will provide “more addresses in cyberspace than there are grains of sand on the world’s beaches” and should be of great benefit to businesses and consumers alike.

It seems churlish to dismiss her initiatives as crowd-pleasing steps designed mainly to lift the Commission’s popularity at a time of moderate public confidence in EU institutions and the EU project. Rather, Reding appears to have a gift for identifying measures – such as last year’s price cap on international mobile phone calls – which make a genuine difference to daily life.

The Commission is also as active as ever in other key areas of competence. For Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, there is the weighty matter of keeping alive the Doha talks on liberalising world trade. But the institution has also set itself the goal of reaching a bilateral free trade deal with South Korea by the end of this year.

Even more impressive has been the success of Neelie Kroes, the competition commissioner, in striking separate deals with Eon and RWE, Germany’s two giant utility and energy companies, to sell some assets as a way of avoiding antitrust charges. These deals went down badly with the German government, but showed that the Commission was prepared to be as tough as nails in fulfilling its core responsibilities for competition policy and the internal market.

Elsewhere in the Commission, the evidence for continuing momentum in policymaking is mixed. Olli Rehn, the enlargement commissioner, is tirelessly encouraging western Balkan countries along the rocky road to eventual EU membership.

Rehn has put a lot of effort this year into supporting pro-EU political forces in Serbia against militant nationalists. But Croatia remains the region’s only country with a firm promise of relatively early entry, just as it was in 2004. Meanwhile, the EU’s negotiations with Turkey are in suspended animation.

Two factors may explain the Commission’s inclination to avoid controversy where possible in its last 18 months in office. One is that Barroso instinctively understands the limits to the Commission’s role in an age when power in the EU has moved in the direction of national governments and, to a degree, the European Parliament.

The other is that Barroso has his eyes set on his personal future – either as Commission president for a second five-year term, or as the first full-time president of the European Council (if the Lisbon Treaty enters into force). Even his admirers acknowledge this may be taking a certain toll on the Commission’s performance.

“He is more or less overtly looking at his next job,” says one diplomat. “This is not the best way to provide a strong stimulus for action at the Commission.”

Barroso will need political support from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who could block his career plans if they choose. So far Sarkozy seems to be backing Barroso – he has defended him from critcs who claim the Commission should have been more wary of making pronouncements that might be seized upon by opponents of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.

Uncertainty at the Commission would surely rise if the trickle of premature departures were to turn into a stream. Even more damaging would be a repeat of the 1999 affair when Martin Bangemann, the industry commissioner from Germany who was responsible for Europe’s telecoms sector, resigned to take a job with Telefónica, Spain’s leading telecoms company.

Still, Barroso can comfort himself with the thought that Washington still trumps Brussels when it comes to fin de régime convulsions. In What Happened, his newly published memoir, the former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan slams the administration he served from 2003 to 2006 for having a “permanent campaign” approach to government, and says President George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a “serious strategic blunder”.

Is there a Scott McClellan in Brussels waiting to do his worst? If so, no one has yet identified him.

Tony Barber is Brussels bureau chief of the Financial Times