If it's not a rush, we're close. The mandate of the EU institutions elected in mid-2019 is coming to an end, and the European elections are scheduled for early June, which will (perhaps) redefine the political landscape of the continent, but the formal deadline is set for November 2024. And yet several of the political protagonists of the last five years have pushed forward, abandoning their mission well in advance to “book” the next one. The first to do so were two key Commission vice-presidents last summer, Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans and Danish liberal Margrethe Vestager. The first to run for the leadership of the center-left party in his country's early political elections. The second to launch his bid for the presidency of the European Investment Bank. The mission failed for both of them. Timmermans had to admit defeat in the polls on November 22nd due to the success of the right-wing extremists around Geert Wilders. Just two weeks later, Vestager was overtaken in the EIB race by another woman: outgoing Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Nadia Calviño. The former EU antitrust tsarina, whose political star has weakened over the years, was only unfortunately able to return to the ranks of Ursula von der Leyen's Commission for the remaining months. But now it is – or rather, it will be – a very big person who is giving up the top positions of the European institutions: Charles Michel, the President of the European Council. “I have decided to run in the European elections in June 2024: I will lead the list of the Reform Movement, my political family in French-speaking Belgium,” Michel announced last night in a three-way interview with the three main Belgian newspapers.
This is how Michel gets the EU governments into trouble
Open the sky. Because the (legitimate) election of the former Prime Minister of Brussels risks putting in serious trouble the very people that Michel was supposed to lead for the last five years: the heads of government of the EU. To understand why, just take a look at the calendar. The European vote will take place across the continent from June 6th to 9th. Once the results are officially determined and announced, the new members elected to the European Parliament – including presumably the returned leader of the Belgian Liberals Michel – will be asked to be sworn in for their new role. As Michel himself checked in advance, the inauguration should take place in mid-July, probably on the 16th. By this final date, the EU heads of state and government must have previously agreed on the name of the new president of the European Council – the man or woman who, according to the treaties, is called upon to carry out the work of the EU's highest political institution and to coordinate the very sensitive intergovernmental summits. If the law firms could previously count on several months to negotiate the name of Michel's successor, they now have to do the math again: They only have a month left after the European Championships, the results of which they will not be able to ignore. A big problem, at least for the leaders furthest from sovereignism, because perhaps failing to reach an agreement by early July would lead to a paradoxical and potentially destructive scenario for the Union: it would annul it Handed over to Viktor Orbán.
Putin's avatar at the head of the EU?
The Hungarian Prime Minister makes no secret of his aim to “destroy” the Union from within, or at least to adapt it to his ideas: pro-Russian, fiercely anti-LGBT and migrants, reducing democracy to a bells and whistles. But he is also the longest-serving head of state in the entire EU (he has been in office continuously since 2010) and knows how the decision-making machinery works and its weak points inside and out. In the second half of 2024, precisely in the period that will act as a link between the old and the new legislative periods, his Hungary will hold the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, the body in which everyone discusses technical issues and Member States' political dossiers. A responsibility that is usually very important, not to mention that there is no President of the European Council capable of “supervising” what is happening in the institution directly subordinate to him. And the ultimate devil (in the form of Putin) is in the details. Because the regulation of the European Council (Article 2.4) is clear: in the event of the president's defection for any reason, the head of government of the country that holds the six-monthly presidency of the Council assumes his functions until the appointment of a new person. So, if an agreement on Charles Michel's successor has not been reached and secured as of July 1, there is a risk that the EU will become hostage to what it calls “Putin's fifth column”.
Reactions to poison and surprise scenarios
“Charles Michel's decision to give up the presidency of the European Council early in order to continue his political career as a MEP is not only selfish but also irresponsible,” attacks Alberto Alemanno, founder of the NGO The Good Lobby and professor of European law. Who sticks the knife in the wound by recalling the “constant battle of egos” that Michel waged with Ursula von der Leyen over the five years and concluding that the final act of his term in office marked him as “who…” will go down in the archives of history as the most ineffective president ever appointed to the head of the European Council.” The reaction of the Dutch MEP Sophie in't Veld, one of the fiercest Orbán opponents in the European Parliament, was just as toxic: “The captain leaves the ship in the middle of the storm,” attacks the Volt boss, commenting on Michel’s choice. “If your commitment to the fate of the European Union is so high, how credible can you be as a candidate?” The reaction of another privileged observer of European politics, the director of the European Center for International Political Economy Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, is more nuanced , according to which Michel's regression “only pushes back the race for his successor by six to nine months”: damage for some candidates who will still be grappling with national politics. Could Michel's move end up benefiting candidates who are already known to the vast majority of European voters and have no other institutional commitments? There is a well-known former governor of the ECB sitting insidiously in Città della Pieve, who reacts precisely to this identity…
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