The year that has ended has been a complicated one for the heads of the three main institutions of the European Union. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel and Parliament President Roberta Metsola have shut down with various stops at home for almost two years following the Covid-19 pandemic which has kept Europeans busy has, you had to deal with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which changed the geopolitical coordinates in the Old Continent. It has also restored ideal meaning to liberal democracies after the post-communist neoliberal drunkenness in which, according to The Economist, the West sinned by arrogance.
The lesson coming from Ukraine, writes the London weekly, is that the West is also freedom, something worth dying for, Ukrainians teach. And the support for Kyiv, which was immediately unreservedly granted despite the initial hesitation of some major member states, has given new impetus and an ideal mission to EU leaders, notably Roberta Metsola, who was first visited by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then followed by the other two (separately).
Now Maltese politics, the EPP’s rising star, must deal with a big deal, Judge Michel Claise’s investigation into alleged corruption by non-EU states to influence decision-making processes, which has already jailed a Vice-President of Parliament Greek Eva Kaili, who was immediately expelled from Pasok and dismissed from the office of vice president in record time by an almost unanimous vote. The purses confiscated from the home of the former TV journalist and her father, who were caught fleeing with a shopping cart full of cash, rewarded the presumption of innocence in the knowledge of the chamber’s image damage that would have inflicted a defense on the Vice President’s bitter end would be enormous if not been fatal.
Metsola has acted decisively, but it is inevitable that the scandal caused by the investigation, with the confiscation of around €1.5 million in cash, along with photos of the bundles of banknotes, will temporarily damage its image. Also inevitable is the ridicule of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who for years has held the European Parliament responsible for the corruption in his country: The solution to the scandal, said the Fidesz boss, is the abolition of the plenary hall in Strasbourg with delegates from the national ones parliaments. Metsola, who said he felt “anger and anger” at the court storm that erupted in and around his courtroom, was forced to concede. But the next European Championship is still a year and a half away: he has time to recover if he cleans up.
Also because on the other side von der Leyen and Michel, now officially separated at home, are on either side of Rue de la Loi. Although it seems that Henry Kissinger never said the famous phrase about the EU’s problem with telephone numbers, the dualism between the President of the Commission and that of the European Council has become much more apparent in this legislature. Last December 1, Michel met Chinese President and CCP Secretary Xi Jinping alone, not exactly a second visit, while von der Leyen traveled to Ireland to meet the Taoiseach, Irish Prime Minister Michéal Martin.
That was enough to reignite the saga of the two presidents in constant competition. A narrative that has some basis if the commission’s deputy chief spokesman was careful to confirm on record that the EU executive had no “involvement” or “interactions” with Europe Building in organizing Michel’s visit to China. In other words, they didn’t even ask us if we wanted to leave.
The news marks not only the first face-to-face meeting between EU and China leaders since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the ongoing competition between the two presidents of the union. A competition that has been ongoing between the former Belgian prime minister and the former German minister, who has been involved since the “Sofagate,” the diplomatic incident that took place in April 2021 during a visit between the two to Ankara by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This episode, in which von der Leyen was relegated to the sofa while Erdogan and Michel chatted on two armchairs, showed everyone that relations between the two presidents were not excellent, even if EU sources claim that the two are “good have working relationships”.
In reality, as Liberation journalist Jean Quatremer explained in his blog Coulisses de Bruxelles, this incident in Turkey was caused by a mistake by von der Leyen in not sending his chief of protocol to the scene. There was a precise reason why the Commission’s protocol officer at the time, French nobleman and “Enarque” Nicolas de la Granville, current EU ambassador to Norway, was not sent to Ankara.
Quatremer reconstructed that he made a fatal mistake in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic: On the occasion of an official visit to the Commission, the guest was sent up in the elevator with the President and the Chief of Protocol. as required by the Covid regulations. The President’s chief of staff, Björn Seibert, had been left in front of the elevator for health reasons. But he wanted to go up there with a collaborator. Angry, he is said to have obtained the head of protocol from the president, who was appropriately appointed EU representative in Oslo by Josep Borrell.
For this reason, if the story told by Quatremer is true (and there is no reason to doubt it: it has not been denied), the Commission has not sent anyone to Turkey to take care of the practical details of the visit. But in international politics protocol is important and Michel, who was prime minister unlike von der Leyen, knows it so well that he, the chief of protocol, sent him to scout and how, covid or not covid. But German politics skillfully used Michel’s mistake, who had sat next to Erdoğan and left her on the sidelines on the sofa, and managed to gain a non-negligible image advantage from this incident, to appear as the victim of a sexist act wanted by Erdogan, which Michel wrongly did not refuse. “I felt hurt and alone, as a woman and as a European,” she later said in parliament.
Since then, the narrative of the saga of the two presidents has been a well-established narrative topos of this legislative period. Michel’s visit to Beijing on December 1, capped by a three-hour bilateral meeting with Xi and completed by a streamed press conference, is another chapter in this feature. All the more so, as an EU source confirmed to Adnkronos, Michel’s cabinet “made no attempt” to organize a joint visit with von der Leyen to Beijing, which might have had a greater impact than a single mission by the President of the European Council . However, the same source points out that “nowhere in the treaties is it written that the two presidents must always travel together”.
In fact, Article 15 of the EU Treaty provides that the President of the European Council “ensures, at his level, the external representation of the Union in matters relating to its common foreign and security policy, without prejudice to the powers of the High Representative of the European Union”. As a reminder, EU High Representative Josep Borrell was in Lodz, Poland on 1 December for the OSCE Ministerial Meeting. For her part, the President of the Commission “represents the Commission at meetings of the European Council, at G7 and G20 summits, at summits with non-EU countries and at the main debates in the European Parliament and the EU Council”.
Therefore, according to the contract, von der Leyen is required to be present at the EU-China summits, but not necessarily at a bilateral meeting between Michel and Xi, like the one on December 1. But contracts are one thing, practice is another: otherwise it is not clear why von der Leyen went to Ankara in April 2021, if not for the fact that Turkey is a very important partner of the EU. And it is difficult to argue that China is not a priority partner for the Union.
There are several institutions in the EU, explained spokeswoman Dana Spinant, “each with a very specific role and mandate. Sometimes we meet foreign dignitaries or leaders, sometimes we meet them separately, we travel separately or we receive them separately in Brussels “Depends on many things, including of course what is on the agenda and what we want to discuss. That’s why sometimes we travel alone, sometimes not.” Despite all this, the content of the conversation between Michel and Xi was partially obscured, at least at the media level, although it is relevant: the President of the European Council reported that he discussed with the Chinese head of state both the crisis in the Ukraine and the situation in China due to the Covid-19 pandemic, emphasizing again that EU companies are ready to ship vaccines to Beijing provided the Chinese authorities approve them.
Foreign policy is hard power and the domain of the member states, not the Union, which is the realm of soft power. But the fact that the Treaties also give EU Presidents a role in this area offers opportunities for high visibility for the politicians who hold these positions. So the saga of the two presidents seems to be continuing. But in Brussels there are those who believe that the two “quarrels” would do well not to underestimate the third, Metsola, who is young, a woman, from the EPP and very good with the media. Maltese politics “burnt” them both, first going personally to Russian-bombed Ukraine and announcing the visit on April 1 last year with a terse tweet: “On my way to Kyiv”. Provided Qatargate permits, the legislature will end in 2024, which is not far off, and the balance in Parliament is developing fast. Stay tuned for a quote from a very capable former Chief Spokesman.