Thursday 16 October 2008

European conservatives want Barroso to remain EU Commission president - updated

EUobserver tells us that the European conservative leaders want Mr Barroso to remain EU Commission president after the next European Parliament elections, when a new EU Commission will be elected.

How boring. How uninspiring for Europe. How... conservative.

I think that Jon Worth, although biased as a social-democrat, is completely right when he demands that Barroso should leave Brussels for a post that offers possibilities for a person without European charisma to work in decent tranquility.

And Jon remains right when he quotes a Café Babel interview that indicates that the lost Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland should have been the right time for "the leader of the EU" to resign.

But this is how the EU advances: By remaining boring, even for those of us who have a certain passion for European issues, and even for the project called "European Union".

In the end this means: The next European Parliament elections - the citizens of the European Union - will need to decide over Barroso's future!


Update:

I just read in an article in the German newspaper FAZ that Jean-Claude Juncker was the one to propose Barroso for a second term. I thought, Juncker would be more intelligent, but maybe he is just tired (as the article also suggests) after these demanding days of the financial crisis.

2 comments:

Ralf Grahn said...

I would really want to see the other candidates to be launched by the European level parties.

Julien Frisch said...

Well, yes, that's a good point. But still...