This coming Thursday evening, November 19 during the “Last Supper,” the 27 heads of the EU Member States will decide who will be the President of Europe and its real Foreign Minister. It is almost certain that the post of the President will be taken by a European People’s Party candidate while the Socialists will get the Foreign Minister. Frankly speaking, if this deal stays to the end, the Socialists, despite their loss in the European elections, will be the real winners on the battlefield because the post of the Foreign Minister is by far more powerful than those of the President of the Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament together. The Foreign Minister will establish a service from scratch and will hire 6,000 people while others will have to work with whatever they find.
For President of the European Council, there are several EPP candidates. Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, said if it is so declared that he will be proposed by the Heads of State that he will agree, but the frontrunners for the job are still Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean Claude-Juncker, who is also the head of the 16-member Eurozone, and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.  For the post of Foreign Minister, the name of Italy’s former Communist Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema was offered, but it will not be easy to pass in the European Parliament because most new Member States have still fresh memories of D’Alema’s behavior during the Soviet invasions in Poland and Czechoslovakia, which anticipates even a possible rejection of the Barroso Commission. If D’Alema is appointed Foreign Minister, European Commissioner Antonio Tajani should step down and return to Italy because the Foreign Minister will also be the first Vice President of the Commission. For Tajani, that will not be a problem - on the contrary, he will return to the central political scene of Italy where he will certainly be elected as Governor of Lazio - it will be bad for the European People’s Party because in the new Commission he will have the duty to organize EPP Commissioners politically, acting as kind of a “duty sergeant.” If D’Alema is excluded, there are other Socialist candidates. One of those who is well-qualified for the post is the former Commissioner from Greece (now Minister of Education in her country) Anna Diamantopoulou. Her PASOK party in Greece recently achieved a landslide electoral victory, and, as a woman, she would counterbalance the gender-imbalance of the European Union’s hierarchy, which has a shortage of women. Her party’s leader, Greek Prime Minister George A. Papandreou, is President of Socialist International, she knows well the system in Brussels, is trusted by its players, and, if elected, will bring no surprises to those who anoint her. In this political chess game, Diamantopoulou can only be the dark horse candidate if the Heads of State come to a deadlock, and she would give them a way out as happened with the election of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso five years ago.
The game for both posts, however, very much depends on the British and the French. Germany, with the recent re-naming of Barroso to another term as Commission President, and the configuration of the top administrative positions at the Commission, got more than they expected. France, so far, has gotten nothing, and Britain not only got nothing but used up its political capital promoting former prime minister Tony Blair to be the EU President, a decision which went down the drain. That means a last-minute change of heart and reversal of fortunes and all prognostications, however remote, cannot be excluded. What could happen? French Prime Minister Francois Fillon for president of the Council for EPP, and British Foreign Minister David Miliband as the EU’s Foreign Minister for the Socialists would be a coup that would make Britain powerful, despite Miliband taking himself out of the running. As to how much of a Socialist a Brit can be is another story. Indeed, the difference between Labourites and Tories in Britain is that if a major auto industry goes bankrupt in Britain, the British will let it close no matter what government is in power. The difference being that the Labourites will give a free lunch and a bottle of milk to the laid-off workers while the Tories will not give even that.