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Fight over strengh of EU post Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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U.K. to Battle With Germany, France Over Top EU Post (Update5)
June 17 (Bloomberg) -- Britain, and a group of European Union conservative parties, are resisting French and German efforts to appoint Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt as president of the European Commission on concern he would seek to increase the power of institutions in Brussels.
U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is seeking allies in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe to oppose the Belgian at a meeting of EU leaders today, said British officials in London and Brussels who declined to be identified. The European People's Party conservative grouping asked Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to nominate EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, a British Conservative.
``I don't believe that the British government would want to have a Belgian,'' Michael Butler, U.K. ambassador to the EU from 1979 to 1985, said in London. ``Belgians are about the only federalists left in the European Union.''
The dispute over who should replace Romano Prodi, 63, at the commission, the Brussels-based regulator and executive arm of the 25-nation union, risks snarling attempts at the summit to complete a new European constitution. Britain is suspicious of creating more of a federal system in the EU and vetoed a Belgian commission candidate 10 years ago.
The meeting comes four days after record-low turnout in European Parliament elections that became a continent-wide protest against the EU and handed Blair's Labour Party the worst defeat since before World War I.
Conservative Claim
The European People's Party claimed the right to name the next commission president after the party remained the strongest in the European Parliament in the election, winning 278 of the 732 seats. Verhofstadt's party, the Flemish Liberals, known as VLD, is allied with the Liberal movement.
``I will not under any circumstances support Verhofstadt and the reason is he does not support the will of the European people,'' said Hans-Gert Poettering, the group's floor leader in the parliament, as he arrived for the summit.
The European People's Party is an umbrella group for parties ranging from Germany's Christian Democrats, historic backers of EU integration, to the more skeptical British Conservatives. Some of its members may splinter off and form a new centrist parliamentary group with the Liberals and the more free-market Socialists, diluting the group's influence.
French deputies in the Union for French Democracy led by Francois Bayrou broke away yesterday, taking 11 seats to the parliament's Liberal group.
German-French Alliance
Germany, which with France formed the core of the original six-nation EU in 1958, ``very clearly'' backs Verhofstadt, Interior Minister Otto Schily told a Berlin press conference today. The Belgian leader ``would be a very good president of the commission,'' French President Jacques Chirac said on June 2.
The summit's chairman, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, plans ``to recommend a name,'' Joe Lennon, an Irish government spokesman, said yesterday. He had no comment on an Irish Times report that Ireland will propose Verhofstadt, who hasn't yet said whether he wants the job.
Britain would need at least four other countries to block the appointment if it came to a vote. The EU has a tradition of seeking unanimity on big decisions.
Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, would face the task of reconciling Britain with France and Germany after last year's falling out over Iraq and increasing tensions over French and German calls for more government interference in the economy.
Patten, 60, entered British politics in 1966, and orchestrated John Major's come-from-behind reelection victory in 1992. As commissioner he has criticized his own party for turning its back on Europe.
National Representatives
Each country will get one representative on the next commission, which takes office for a five-year term on Nov. 1. Overseeing a staff of 20,000, the Brussels-based body proposes legislation, manages the EU's 100 billion-euro ($120 billion) aid programs and enforces antitrust and trade laws.
Verhofstadt, 51, was known as ``baby Thatcher'' in the 1980s for advocating a free market, state asset sales and lower taxes. He reduced Belgian corporate and personal taxes in his first term from 1999 to 2003, before embracing the four-day workweek and German and French proposals for an EU-wide corporate tax code, two things that Britain opposes.
``Europe has no alternative but to embrace flexibility and liberalization in product and capital markets,'' U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown told bankers late yesterday in London.
Military Summit
After holding up a NATO agreement to defend Turkey during the Iraq war in February 2003, Verhofstadt further angered Blair by organizing a summit with Germany, France and Luxembourg to sketch an EU military-planning staff that would be independent of the Atlantic alliance.
Verhofstadt is ``a federalist but he's not an extreme federalist,'' Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said. ``He's very clever, he's very efficient, he has a vision, he's an idealist. What can you find better?''
France and Germany later retreated from an open breach with Britain and the U.S. by consenting to Blair's insistence on EU military planning within the NATO umbrella. Verhofstadt, meanwhile, has become a byword for a European superstate in Britain, where opposition is mounting to the proposed EU constitution.
``The prime minister may have suddenly seen the light about exactly what the constitution means for Britain, but it has been blindingly obvious to everyone else for some time,'' Conservative opposition leader Michael Howard said in parliament in April. ``It is obvious to the Belgian prime minister, who called it the capstone of a federal state.''
Labour Plunges
Resistance to a more united EU -- and to Britain's allying with U.S. President George W. Bush in Iraq -- sank Blair's Labour party to 22.3 percent of the vote in the EU parliamentary vote. The Conservatives garnered 27.4 percent and the U.K. Independence Party, which wants to pull Britain out of the EU, got 16.8 percent.
Deadlock over Verhofstadt might lead to the emergence of a compromise candidate such as Patten, European Parliament President Pat Cox, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel or Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker. Those names have been suggested by European politicians and publications ranging from Britain's Financial Times to Germany's Focus.
Luxembourg Precedent
Such a swing would echo what happened in 1994, when Blair's Conservative Party predecessor, John Major, at the last minute vetoed the appointment of Verhofstadt's predecessor, Jean-Luc Dehaene. The job eventually went to Luxembourg's leader, Jacques Santer, whose commission was forced to quit in 1999 over charges of nepotism and financial mismanagement.
``It might be that Ahern has a sense an overwhelming majority can be found around a Candidate X, who might be a complete dark horse,'' said Peter Ludlow, a Brussels-based historian and author of ``The Making of the New Europe.''
British bettors make Verhofstadt a 6-4 favorite, according to Ladbrokes, the U.K.'s biggest betting shop. Juncker is 3-1, EU Justice Commissioner Antonio Vitorino 4-1, Schuessel 8-1, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana 8-1 and Cox 10-1. Other contenders are Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen (10-1), EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy (16-1), Patten (20-1) and Ahern himself, at 25-1.
Juncker said yesterday he doesn't want the job, having won reelection on Sunday to a third, five-year term as Luxembourg's leader. He said he supports Verhofstadt, ``because he's Belgian, because he's my cousin, because he's my brother.''
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