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Annette Godart-van der Kroon
Ludwig von Mises Institute Europe Frits Bolkestein, former European Commissioner Herman de Croo, Minister of State and Honorary Speaker of the House of Representatives Mart Laar, former Prime Minister of Estonia Earl of Stockton, Chairman of Macmillan Publishers Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, Deputy Leader ALDE Group
Presidential Address February 2010
“The new Order, three presidents is at least one too many”
Since the beginning of 2010 Europe has a new President, Herman van Rompuy and a high representative, baroness Ashton. It will be an interesting case to watch how this will develop in the future. The point I want to discuss is not so much the personalities, who will fulfill these functions as the function itself and its relation with Europe. For example, Obama is not going to Madrid for the EU top. Who should he greet first? The president of the European Council, van Rompuy, the president of the European Commission Barroso, or the rotating president of the moment, Zapatero? v Why are there so many Presidents? It would be an improvement to stop the rotating presidency. How on earth can 27 countries contribute to the better steering of Europe? Even if one is a proponent of decentralization, this system is not functional anymore. According to a prominent American politician the member states have still too much power.[1] According to him the internal market should be more integrated and the crucial domains should be regulated on European level, so that the political power of Europe could grow. This American politician is very conservative, but apparently he (and his party) are not against this development. v Suppose the rotating presidency will be abolished, then there would be two presidents left. The first is the president for the European Commission and one for the European Council. But of course there would be a struggle of who will be the most important person in Europe. In that scenario the European heads of State will not give up their power and influence. The president of the European Council –in this case van Rompuy-could then act as or have the same functions as the German President, which turns out to be more symbolic. He could still chair the Council, but the definition of his function would be more explicit. In any case the American President would know who to greet first. A more daring scenario would be to elect the President directly. The consequence would be that Europeans would feel more involved. 2) As for the function of High Representative- for the moment held by Baroness Ashton-this job is a try-out. It might be possible, that this function will have a different description after one year or so. For now she has to manage several functions: -She is the head of external relations at the European Commission (“the bit of the EU machine with billions in aid money”) [2] -She is the foreign policy envoy of the 27 EU governments (previously held by Javier Solana) -She must chair meetings of EU foreign Ministers. Now there are already complaints that things are not going well, and that “a huge job has fallen into a mid-sized politician, who is now tailoring the job to fit.” [3] She has already difficulties to assert her authority in the turf fights surrounding the new EAS (External Action Service) the diplomatic machine created by Lisbon. On top of that Barosso is accused of chipping away at her dual status as a commissioner and representative of national governments.[4] This job will be the hardest to fulfill and perhaps the person who is doing this job or is going to fulfill it, should only be the representative of national governments and drop the function in EAS, which means, that he/she will only chair the meetings of the EU foreign Ministers. That job is already very hard. On top of that she (or in the future he) needs to have a strong stand against those ministers.
Of course there are comments concerning this topic. For example Jean-Luc Dehaene was against this whole idea of a “President”, not because he is a Eurosceptic-on the contrary- but precisely because according to him “the European Council is the battleground of European interests”. According to him the only solution would be that the chairman of the European Council is the same person as the president of the European Commission. [5] [1] C. Boyden Gray, former Ambassador to the European Union from 2005-2008 in “Misschien krijgt u al heimwee naar Bush?”in “De Standaard” dd 14-2-2010, p. 36-37 [2] Charlemagne” Shrinking the job to fit the woman?” in The Economist of February 13-19, 2010, p. 34 [3] Idem [4] Idem [5] Jean-Luc Dehaene “Als het aan mij lag, was die voorzitter er nooit gekomen” in Knack, 39th volume, nr. 48, November 26-December 2, 2009, p. 17
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Ludwig Von Mises, one of the most prominent economists of the 20th century, was born in Lvov (The Ukraine). While studying in Vienna, he came to appreciate and defend the principles of classical Liberalism. In 1911, he published his path-breaking book Theory of Money and Credit.
An opponent of the totalitarian developments between the two World Wars, he fled to Geneva and later to the U.S.A.(1940). There he continued to write his enormous oeuvre against the rising tide of Socialism and Keynesianism. His work was dominated by two themes: The first was the essential role of money for the social efficiency of the market system. The second was the free society. He was a prolific writer and his most important works are: Theory of money and credit, Human Action, Liberalism, Bureaucracy; The Anti- Capitalist Mentality.
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