Does Sarkozy join "Anyone but Barroso"?

The Coulisses de Bruxelles have noticed that Napoléon Nicolas Sarkozy for the first time refused to explicitly support EU Commission President Barroso for a second term, postponing a decision after a possible second Irish referendum (in English: European Voice).

Is Mr S. now joining the "Anyone but Barroso!" crew?

Sarkozy does not speak English

I just learned that the ex-President of the Council of the European Union and still-President of one of the major EU countries - Nicolas Sarkozy - does not speak (enough) English to talk to the newly elected US president Obama without translator - which embarrasses the advisors of the latter.

This is maybe also why France is still putting so much weight on the usage of the French language within the EU and other international organisations...

The Great Juncker: Back to the nation state (updated)

Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg and head of the informal group of EU countries that use the Euro as their currency, was the "star" in an interview at France 2 last week.

Cédric Puisney, the European who is never satisfield, was so kind to give access to the full report in his article, including discussions in the European Parliament, a short presentation of the functioning of money laundering, and from minute six of the video you can see the interview with Mr Juncker.

The interviewer starts with a reference to a statement made by EU Council President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which the latter addresses Juncker directly (in his function as Prime Minister), demanding that if the EU will ask from other countries to close tax havens, some of their own countries (which means, inter alia, Luxembourg) will need to implement better and more transparent rules themselves.

In the interview (in French), Juncker tries to defend his country against the comparison with "classical" tax havens like the Bahamas. However, he looks pretty much in a defence position, trying to discredit the report of France 2 and not really reacting to the argumentation of the news presentor David Pujadas.

Only in one of the last sentences he admits that the common position of other European countries regarding the bank secrecy is not in accordance with the position of Luxembourg (or, vice versa...), which is why the country did not participate in a reunion of finance ministers discussing these questions.

Altogether, a report and an interview well worth seeing, because they reflect the changements the European Union is going through in these days of crisis, and because they present Juncker not in his typical positive European light, but in a national defence position, something that does not suit him too well.

Update:

I just read in an article from Le Monde that the day after the interview had been aired, the Information Director of France 2 excused the report and the interview. Ridicule...

Sarkozy announces urgent EU summit on Georgia (updated)

The German newspaper website sueddeutsche.de has just announced that French EU-Council President

Nicolas Sarkozy has called for an urgent EU-Summit on Georgia on the 1st of September (that is Monday in one week).

The summit will take place in Brussels as other sources inform.

According to AFP, "French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had warned this week that Sarkozy might convene an emergency EU meeting if Russia failed to pull back its forces from positions in the ex-Soviet republic." Actually, Poland had asked for this already more than two weeks ago.

The last extraordinary urgent European Councils I am aware of where held in February 2003 on Iraque and before on September 11th in 2001.

Countries from same 'cultural area' to share EU-Commissioner?

According to an article in the German national newspaper Die Welt (which I found through the "European Union Law Blog")

"the French EU-Council presidency under the leadership of president Nicolas Sarkozy is considering to reduce the number of EU-Commissioners in such a manner that countries from "similar cultural and linguistic areas" will dispose of just one common Commissioner in Brussels."

(own translation)

As source, the newspaper is refering to "high diplomatic circles", but I haven't found any confirmation anywhere else (did you?).

The goal of this initiative, if the news is correct, seems to be to prevent lengthy disputes about how to scrap individual countries' commissioners.

In agreement with the European Union Law Blog, I doubt that this will actually avoid any lengthy discussions, especially since there will hardly be an agreement on what a 'similar cultural area' is, how many countries will be included, and from which country of each cultural area the Commissioner will come from.

Ha-ha! I can already imagine the public debates about questions such as "Skandinavia", the "Baltics", the "Germanic area", the "Roman area" (including Romania!)...

Maybe drawing lots will be less conflictual, and if the European Parliament disagrees, it can redraw until the best Commission is composed!

World trade, the French, and New Labour

These days, world trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (in Geneva) are under way to see whether the so-call Doha Development Round can lead to a new global agreement or if Doha will ultimately fail. All details of the negotiations are constantly published on the WTO homepage. Prospects are low to mixed.

What interests me is the inner-European personal conflict that has evolved: French president Nicolas Sarkozy and EU-Commissioner Peter Mandelson (Trade) are at loggerheads with each other about "the" European position and are playing a nice little blame game. If we add another figure, Pascal Lamy, French Director-General of the WTO, the whole story become a nice little ménage à trois:

• Nicolas is the current president of France (in office since last year) and president of the EU Council (since this month). The centre-right politician has won his campaign and started his French presidency with comparatively extreme reformist policies. He is not one of the typical French "Ecole National d'Administration (ENA)"-elites who have captured a large share of top posts in French politics.

• Pascal is exactly one of these typical ENA-guys. Specialisation in economics. Member of the Socialist Party. Rather straight carreer. In his WTO office for almost three years now. Before he was... EU-Commissioner for Trade. To get into his WTO position, there must have been extensive lobbying by the French president and/or the Prime minister - at the time Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin (also an ENA-guy).

• Peter is one of those British "New Labour" architects, hence a social democrat with pro-market orientation. His political career was interrupted several time by charges of corruption. He is in office as EU Commissioner since 2004.
  

So we have these three man: Two social democrats and one centre-right/conservative. Two French and one Brit. On self-made ego-mane double president, the elitist WTO Director General, and one EU-Commissioner with quite some controversies during his career.

And now they are playing the big interests game: French ("European") farmers vs. EU power and world markets vs. global free trade with a piece of the pie for everyone. Yet, negotiations are carried on by individuals. And these three individuals have quite a fascinating mixture of personal, cultural and political similarities and differences with a big potential for conflict besides their political responsibilities. Alpha-males, dependent on each other but nonetheless in the constant thrive to get the maximum for themselves.

Yes, WTO is about trade, global questions, and power plays between powerful blocs. But on the second track it is also the arena for personalities. In the end, there will be winners and losers. On the first track, the winners and losers will be countries and their people. On the second track, it will be high-level political individuals.

Both will influence the course of the upcoming years, for the EU and the rest of the world