The European Union’s opaque leadership nominations diminish its democratic credentials

More than ever in its often momentous six-decade history, the choices for the top jobs in the European Union matter. For Europe’s traumas are far from over. There is not only the unfinished business of Brexit to contend with for the new team, where frustrations are growing as acute on the other side of the Channel as they are in Britain. There is also the migrant crisis, and the failure of European states to assist those on Mediterranean, such as Malta, Italy and Greece, with naval patrols and relocation.

Financial instability, affecting institutions large and small, from Deutsche Bank to Banco Popolare di Vicenza continue to haunt the euro, as does the ever-present risk of Italian national insolvency. To the west, there’s the small matter of an incipient trade war with Donald Trump’s America, and to the east the threat of Russian aggression and an international relations version of cyber bullying. The greatest trading bloc on the planet is also exceptionally exposed to a global economic slowdown.

Never before, then, has the EU faced so many intractable challenges to its very future, internal and external. Nor, despite some impressive all-night wranglings in the past, has the union found it so difficult to provide itself with fresh leadership of its institutions. The nominees for the four big EU jobs so far announced seem to have been met with apathy at best.

For the new president of the EU Council there is a Belgian nominee; for the presidency of the European Commission, a German; for the European central bank a French national; and for the external affairs post, in effect the EU’s foreign minister, a Spanish cabinet minister. There is a mix of left and right, and of female and male personalities; yet all are from western Europe, three from founding members of the club, and, none from Scandinavia, the eastern nations or the smallest member states.

In the past, this game of 12-dimensional chess was made much easier by the process of agreeing much in advance and by consensus. The spitzenkandidat (German for lead candidate) system ensured that there would be harmony over the choice of commission president between the three main pillars of the EU – the council (representing national governments), the European parliament and the commission itself.

It ran on the basis that a large centre-left and a large centre-right bloc in the EU parliament, and indeed around the table of heads of government, would do a little horse trading and arrive at a relatively uncontroversial choice. Only the British found the process irksome when, during the beef crisis in the 1990s, the Major government vetoed the agreed candidate for president of the commission (but ended up with a more federal one as a result).

Today, the difficulty in arriving at a multi-dimensional balance has been made much more difficult by the rise of the populists and others in the European parliament, and new insurgent groups as disparate as the British Brexit Party (complete with clownish antics), the German Greens and Italy and France’s fascistic anti-immigrant parties. Given the power of veto, they can use it time and again against any and every candidate put forward by the council. It is a process that has no constitutional end point. It is, rather like Brexit, a potentially never-ending nightmare.

The maverick MEPs have their counterparts in the EU council in the official representatives of the governments from Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary and Poland, who are either entirely populist or have been infected with the virus. Only President Macron’s administration suggests any remote signs of life for centrist pro-integration politics, and even he is under intense pressure at home. Social Democrats and Christian Democrats across the continent are in difficulties. Hence the breakdown in the old mechanisms that relied on such a party system.

Meantime, the British contingents wander around confused about what the most effective method of abstention is. While Nigel Farage, Ann Widdecombe and their group were rude enough to turn their backs on the EU’s proceedings, British ministers are metaphorically doing the same, and with no more honour.

It is not Europhobic or Eurosceptic to ask some questions about the way Europe’s institutions work, and to encourage the new commission, parliament and council to think about reforms to the way it takes such crucial decisions. The British, with a broken constitution and Boris Johnson shortly to arrive in Downing Street, are in no position to lecture anyone about maturity, political stability and strong government. Even so, it is plainly the case that the European Union’s opaque way of doing business is neither enhancing its democratic credentials nor forging an ever-closer union of the peoples of Europe – the abiding core mission.