In the end, on Tuesday evening, EU leaders managed to agree on who to nominate for the top jobs, but not before they lamented on how long the process took. From Emmanuel Macron to senior MEPs, doubts were raised about the current process. 

They said they worried on behalf  of ordinary Europeans – but should we be bothered by protracted negotiations?

Macron was frustrated. Someone he had agreed to back for the presidency of the Commission – the Dutch Socialist Frans Timmermans, a worthy candidate whatever his faults – had been blackballed.

Eastern European leaders, unable to forgive Timmermans for what he said about their illiberal laws and encroaching autocracy, said he didn’t understand their countries. And a majority of European People’s Party (EPP) politicians couldn’t see why the EPP as the largest party should defer to a Socialist.

But it’s one thing to be frustrated at not getting your way. It’s another to say that you’re channelling the frustration of ordinary Europeans. Macron is a man derided in France for being out of touch. One of his nicknames is Jupiter, given his lofty airs and detachment.

The bill for the Macron couple’s haircuts and make-up costs the French taxpayer €5,200 a month. That’s more than double what many French workers get. (For comparison, the urbane David Cameron, whose mane needs rather more work than Macron’s fronds, used to pay £90 a cut.)

With the haute coiffure comes the hauteur. Macron publicly humiliated a teenager for not addressing him correctly. He told a 25-year-old frustrated jobseeker that he, Macron, could just cross the road and find him work (although, since he didn’t, he must have also thought it wasn’t worth his valuable time). He’s incurred the wrath of ordinary people for addressing climate change by taxing those on lower incomes.

Macron’s hubris is a matter for the French. The issue here is simply that we shouldn’t take Macron’s concern for ordinary Europeans at face value, nor take decisions based on his attempts at empathy.

Macron has not been alone among leaders in resenting the long drawn-out horse-trading. The sensible Merkel has shaken her head and spared a thought for fellow Germans. As a serial election winner, she has a serious claim to know how they feel.

Other leaders have said that there’s something wrong with a system where 28 leaders bargain behind closed doors over who should fill a handful of jobs for the next five years.

But is there really something wrong? The case for rejecting the current system is that it’s undemocratic thrice over. It’s not transparent. Ordinary people aren’t voting for the leaders. And some unsavoury people with autocratic tendencies get to exercise a virtual veto. 

Timmermans wasn’t wrong about the governments of Hungary and Poland (even if, for the sake of votes, he’s played it both ways with Malta’s rule of law questions, praising Joseph Muscat here and keeping his distance elsewhere).

The EU is founded on making such conflict frequent and routine, so that it does not build up and erupt violently

However, the case for the prosecution is based on a faulty comparison. In no European national Parliament is the Speaker chosen by popular vote. Nor is the foreign minister. With coalition governments – the closest thing we get to the governance of the EU – those positions are allocated on the basis of (you guessed it) horse-trading behind closed doors.

Besides, the EU is not a superstate. There is no national equivalent to the president of the Council of Ministers. Nor is the president of the Commission a Prime Minister.

A second, more serious problem concerns the alternatives to horse-trading. Yes, you have to deal with people whose politics you loathe and whose national interests conflict with yours. But what else is there?

Macron has stated the process needs streamlining. However, you can only smooth over the disagreements by rolling over them.

No candidate for a top job ever gets on to a shortlist without the nod of France and Germany. That’s clearly not going to change.

Streamlining can only mean reducing the scope for objections by smaller member states. Whether it’s done by granting more weight to direct popular voting, or more weight to the European establishment, the net effect will be to increase the say of larger states, since they have a dominating presence in both the popular vote and the institutions. Where would the feelings of ordinary Europeans from smaller member states be then?

In a time of rising, nasty populism, there are many good things to say about the European establishment, which is a bulwark for the defence of individual freedoms against authoritarian creep. But let’s be careful what we wish for.

A system for selecting leaders is for the long term. It transcends the needs of a particular political cycle where populism is on the upswing.

Besides, streamlining could put more wind in the populists’ sails. Macron frames his objections to the current system in the name of ordinary people. But streamlining will only hide the horse-trading. It will not get rid of it.

It will be the horse-trading of the few, not the many. It would mean Macron can be more confident in pushing Timmermans or Michel Barnier, another Macron favourite, for the top post.

Both candidates have excellent qualifications – but that’s because they’re the elite of the elite. What a field day it would be for the anti-elite populist autocrats, posing as underdogs against ‘interference’ and ‘imposition’ from European liberals.

In the larger scheme of things, prolonging the filling of the top jobs by a few days or weeks is nothing. Friction, disagreement, simmering resentment, chicanery and self-interested grandstanding are the stuff of politics, not distractions. The EU is founded on the principle of making such conflict frequent and routine, so that it does not build up and erupt violently.

The current system permits minor states to be spoilers. But in giving them a larger role than they deserve on the basis of demography or economy alone, they also get a stake in the success of the EU. Suspension of membership cannot be punishment, if membership is not a prize.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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