Inside Europe: A Bad Choice for Europe

PARIS — It seemed like a bright idea at the time.

By linking the choice for president of the executive European Commission to European Parliament elections in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, European Union leaders hoped to reverse rising abstentionism and overcome the Continent’s widely bemoaned “democratic deficit.”

If voters around the Union were given a real policy choice personified by a single candidate, they would identify more easily with “Europe” and vote in greater numbers, the theory went.

That in turn would give greater legitimacy to the commission, which proposes and enforces E.U. laws but which critics often denigrate as unelected and undemocratic.

“For the first time, these could be genuine ‘European’ elections, the outcome of which will shape European politics for at least the next five years,” said Simon Hix, professor of European governance at the London School of Economics. “It will be the first time we, as European citizens, can choose who holds the most powerful executive office in the E.U.”

Well maybe. But maybe not.

With less than a year to go until the vote in May, the pitfalls of the new system are becoming clear as Europe seeks a successor to José Manuel Barroso, the center-right former Portuguese prime minister who has been in the hot seat since 2005.

For one thing, an election traditionally used to register a protest vote against national governments may for the first time be used to deliver an almighty kick to Europe itself.

E.U. leaders are anxious at the prospect that an unprecedented wave of euro-skeptic lawmakers might be swept into the unloved Parliament on a tide of anger about mass unemployment, economic stagnation and austerity measures.

As Mark Leonard and José Ignacio Torreblanca of the European Council on Foreign Relations argued in a paper on the rise of continental euro-skepticism, many voters feel the Union’s increasing dominance of national economic policy in the crisis means they can change government but they cannot change policy anymore.

“To an increasing number of citizens in southern European countries, the E.U. looks like the International Monetary Fund did in Latin America: a golden straitjacket that is squeezing the space for national politics and emptying their national democracies of content,” they wrote.

In countries like France, Britain, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, opinion polls suggest as much as a third of the vote may go to anti-E.U. populists and parties of the nationalist far right or the hard left.

That could make it harder to assemble an absolute majority to elect the next commission president.

It may also be deterring top talents from seeking the job. So far, there is little sign of A-list European leaders’ stepping forward to vie for their political family’s nomination.

Three prime ministers seen as potential candidates for the center-right European People’s Party, the biggest bloc in the current E.U. legislature, have taken themselves out of the race.

The three — Donald Tusk of Poland, Jyrki Katainen of Finland and Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden — all chose to stay in national politics.

One serving national leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, outlined why the new system made it unattractive for incumbents to seek the commission presidency.

“I imagine the parties will decide on their candidates in January/February. What happens if the candidate is a prime minister? Can he go on running his country as normal while waging a Europe-wide campaign?” he asked.

“What happens then if his party is not the biggest? Can he simply carry on as prime minister?”

That may leave Europe’s largest political family having to nominate a second-rank figure as its candidate.

Among those mentioned are two serving European commissioners — Viviane Reding of Luxembourg and Michel Barnier of France — and one former member, President Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania. None is a crowd-pulling household name.

One big name voiced by some is Christine Lagarde, a French conservative and head of the International Monetary Fund. But it is not clear that a Socialist French government would nominate her and she is involved in a legal case that may cloud her future.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/business/global/a-bad-choice-for-europe.html?partner=rss&emc=rss