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Replacing Juncker: A centre-left struggle

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 11 July 2017. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

There are almost two years to go until the next European Parliament elections in June 2019. Already Pierre Moscovici, the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, has hinted that he might be interested in the job of President of the European Commission. But, if that appointment is made in 2019 in the same way as it was in 2014, what are his chances, or the chances of any candidate of the political left?

In 2014, the President of the Commission was the candidate of the most successful party in the European Parliament elections – the European People’s Party, which won 214 seats to 185 for the Party of European Socialists. On the face of it, that’s not an unbridgeable gap. The centre-left party actually got more votes than the centre-right in 2014, but the structure of the electoral system meant that EPP votes in small countries, and countries with lower turnout, were worth more than PES votes in larger countries with more enthusiastic voters. 

However, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom removes a significant reservoir of PES support. The British Labour Party won four million votes and 20 MEPs in 2014, all of whom will be gone in 2019; while the EPP will lose nothing electorally from Brexit. The PES therefore need to make good not a 29-seat deficit but a 49-seat deficit.

It is a tall order. In Italy, where the new prime minister Matteo Renzi crushed Silvio Berlusconi’s party in 2014, a more balanced outcome is likely in 2019. In France, the PS and PRG combined won only 13 seats to the UMP’s 20 in 2014; in the Macron era, they seem unlikely to do better. It is difficult to predict what will happen in Germany, a year and a half into the next government’s term, but despite a relatively strong performance in 2014 the SPD were still seven seats behind the CDU/CSU, and it would be a courageous wager to predict that they will close that gap in 2019.

There is a bigger structural issue. In Poland and Hungary, the parties of the old left are out of the picture, and the key political battleground is between the centre right and the hard right. The absence of a strong PES partner in those key Eastern member states is a serious weakness. Even where the centre left is relatively strong, there are problems – the SPÖ in Austria and ČSSD in the Czech Republic currently lead their respective governments, but have both slipped to third place in opinion polls for their countries’ October elections.

It’s not impossible. My calculation is that a net uniform swing of 4% of voters from EPP member parties to their local PES equivalents in each member state would be enough to put the centre-left ahead. Such a swing would not be unusual in a national election, nor indeed unprecedented at European level – in 1999, the PES lost 6.1% and the EPP gained 9.5% compared with previous elections, giving the EPP the status of largest party which they have held ever since.

So Pierre Moscovici, or whoever the centre-left candidate turns out to be, has a tough hill to climb in the next twenty-three months, especially if the Spitzenkandidat process is undertaken again as it was in 2014. (Moscovici as Spitzenkandidat will have the additional challenge of negotiating the support, or at least assent, of President Macron.) Of course, if we have learned anything from the events of 2016, it is surely that anything can happen.

A marriage of convenience

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 9 January 2017. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

Political Brussels woke up on Monday morning – the first day back at work in 2017 for many people – to the shock news that the Italian MEPs of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) are likely to abandon their current parliamentary allies, who include UKIP, and to join the Liberal ALDE group in the European Parliament. Many wondered how Liberal group leader Guy Verhofstadt, one of the most outspoken federalists in European politics, who had excoriated the M5S leader Beppe Grillo in an interview in 2014, could possibly ally with a party whose leadership has opposed Italy’s membership of the euro.

But it is less strange than it may at first appear. The 17 M5S MEPs have established themselves as serious operators in the parliamentary system – unlike their current UKIP allies, who openly deride the institution to which they have been elected. The fact that the UK is likely to leave the EU in 2019 means that the EFDD group, which currently depends on UKIP and M5S for its critical mass, has little future. Grillo himself does not want Italy to leave the EU; his plans for a long-term future in European politics therefore require new allies.

Looking at the other side of the equation, ALDE’s federalism, as opposed to Verhofstadt’s personal position, is often overstated. Like all groups in the European Parliament, it is a little blurry at the edges. New members such as the Czech ANO 2011 are notably less Euro-enthusiastic than the old Liberal core; and even within the core, the Danes and Dutch have moved to a more critical position of late. So the distance between the M5S and ALDE in practice in the European Parliament is much less than the apparent distance between their leaders.

ALDE currently has 68 seats to the Conservative ECR’s 74. The arrival of 17 new MEPs will make the ALDE group clearly the third force in the European Parliament, which will make a difference in internal appointments which are based on the size of the group.  They will presumably also swell Verhofstadt’s numbers in the short term as he contests the presidency of the European Parliament (though the two Italian front runners, Gianni Pitella of the S&D and Antonio Tajani of the EPP, start with significant advantages). There is already some loud internal grumbling about Verhofstadt’s leadership within ALDE, and not only about the new Italian allies. But the fact that he has appointed well-respected Dutch and French MEPs Sophie in’t Veld and Marielle de Sarnez to manage the relationship with M5S will go some way to reassuring the sceptics.

The wider political lesson is that populist political forces have more than one fate, and one of those possible fates is to go mainstream and assimilate to the political establishment. M5S, if it survives in the long term, will always be more edgy than most of its stablemates, whichever political group it is in. But their alliance with the Liberals may go some way to taming their reputation.

How can the Commission President be replaced?

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 5 July 2016. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

Nicholas Whyte predicts that in the event of a vacancy at the top of the European Commission, the EPP Vice-Presidents are well-placed to fill it.

At the end of The Commissioner, a 1987 novel by former British Conservative MEP Stanley Johnson (yes, Boris Johnson’s father), the President of the European Commission is forced to resign and his successor is chosen by vote of the remaining Commissioners.  Almost three decades on, how would that situation be resolved today?

I hasten to add that as far as I know this is a purely theoretical question.  In response to press queries last week, both President Juncker’s spokesman and the President himself insisted that his health is fine and he intends to carry on.  But it’s worth recalling the precedents and the current legal situation, should this ever become an issue.

On two previous occasions, the President of the European Commission resigned before the end of his term.  In both cases, the replacement was his senior Vice-President.  In 1999, when Jacques Santer and the entire college resigned, Manuel Marin took over as Acting President until the Prodi Commission was in place later that year.  He had been one of two Vice-Presidents under Santer, and had served three years longer in the Commission than the other, Sir Leon Brittan.

Those were unusual and dramatic circumstances.  Any vacancy now would probably bear more resemblance to what happened in 1972, when Franco Maria Malfatti resigned as President of the European Commission to renew his political career in Italy.  He had two Vice-Presidents, who had both served since the Commission was established in more or less its present form in 1967.  The older of the two, Sicco Mansholt, took over as President for the nine months until François-Xavier Ortoli began his term in 1973.

If the old rules (such as they were) still applied, the obvious successor in the case of a sudden vacancy at the top today would be Frans Timmermans, the Dutch First Vice-President of the current Commission.  Even though he is only in his first term as a Commissioner, his status as First Vice-President clearly puts him ahead of the three Vice-Presidents who are on their second term – Kristalina Georgieva (Bulgaria), Maroš Šefčovič (Slovakia) and Jyrki Katainen (Finland – yes, he is technically on his second term, as he served out the last few months of Olli Rehn’s mandate in 2014.) 

But the old rules no longer apply, and while Timmermans would certainly take over for the short term, Article 17.7 of the Treaty, which governs the election of the President, may create a problem for his staying in anything more than an interim capacity.  It states:

Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission.  This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members.  If he does not obtain the required majority, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall within one month propose a new candidate who shall be elected by the European Parliament following the same procedure.

(Incidentally only the English, Irish and Maltese translations of the Treaty use a masculine pronoun in that last sentence.  The Czech, Greek and Polish texts have a gender-neutral formulation, and all others repeat “the candidate” from the previous sentence.  Of course, in a lot of languages “the candidate” is grammatically masculine as well.)

Article 246 of the Treaty makes it clear that Article 17.7 would also apply to a mid-term vacancy in the position of President “in the event of resignation, compulsory retirement or death” – in other words, a successor would still need to be proposed by the European Council, “taking into account the elections to the European Parliament” and then approved by the Parliament.  The European People’s Party won the most seats in the 2014 election (but not the most votes) and it is generally accepted that “taking the elections into account” means that a candidate for President of the Commission must come from the EPP ranks of the European People’s Party, who won the most European Parliament seats in the 2014 election.  Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President, is a Socialist.

A mid-term replacement is further constrained by the fact that no member state can have more than one Commissioner at a time.  The proposed new President of the Commission would need either to be a sitting Commissioner or from a country that did not have a sitting Commissioner.  At present, the British place on the European Commission is about to fall vacant due to the resignation of Lord Hill, but it’s difficult to see the UK providing a new President of the Commission under present circumstances.  (Not that it matters given everything else that is happening, but there is incidentally no EPP representation in the UK.)

We now run into the next problem.  The new President must be elected by a qualified majority of the Council, which on my reading of Articles 16 and 238 of the Treaty means at least 72% of the members of the Council – 21 counting the UK –representing Member States comprising at least 65% of the population of the Union.  (The threshold is usually 55% of member states, but that only applies to votes on proposals by the Commission or High Representative.) The EPP, which was dominant on the European Council for many years, now holds the position of head of government in only 7 of the 28 EU member states, the same number as the liberal ALDE and one fewer than the PES, who have eight.  

(Since you asked: the EPP are still on top in Germany, Hungary, Cyprus, Ireland, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, with a total of 33.4% of the EU population; the PES in Italy, Slovakia, Malta, Sweden, Austria, the Czech Republic, Franceand Portugal with 33.9% of the population; and the Liberals in Finland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Estonia, Belgium and Denmark, with a mighty 8.5%.  The ECR have Poland and, for now, the UK; the Croatian and Latvian prime ministers and the President of Lithuania are independents; and the Greek prime minister represents the far Left.)

It therefore seems likely that in the event of a vacancy arising in the current term, the office of President of the Commission would need to be filled by a sitting Commissioner, with an EPP background, but supported from the governments of other groups (the PES and ALDE would be enough) and also at least 376 members of the European Parliament.  On the face of it, this provides a wide choice: as well as current Vice-Presidents Georgieva, Katainen and Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvia), the EPP Commissioners include Günther Oettinger(Germany), Marianne Thyssen (Belgium), Johannes Hahn (Austria), Dimitris Avramopoulos (Greece), ElżbietaBieńkowska (Poland), Miguel Arias Cañete (Spain), Tibor Navracsics (Hungary), Carlos Moedas (Portugal), Phil Hogan(Ireland) and Christos Stylianides (Cyprus).  

In practice the field will narrow down pretty rapidly to the three EPP Vice-Presidents, Katainen, Dombrovskis and Georgieva, two of whom are former prime ministers (Dombrovskis also a former MEP, which may help with the Parliament) and the third a second-term Commissioner.  Although every president since Jacques Santer in 1994 has been a former prime minister, this is not written into the Treaty.  Certainly there is, to put it politely, no obvious correlation between success in one’s term as President of the European Commission and seniority of one’s previous office.  If the situation ever arises, it will be interesting to see who is more able to persuade member state governments of differing political hues to support him or her.  And perhaps, in the context of the rise of Hillary Clinton and the increasing global focus on women as leaders, those masculine pronouns in the Treaty may start to look somewhat out of date.

Seven steps to winning a referendum

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 8 February 2016. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

Now that we know the rough outline of the substance of the proposed deal between the UK and the EU, it might be wise to step back and consider what lessons the UK campaigns for this year’s referendum can learn from similar votes, both in the UK and elsewhere.  As I see it, there are seven broad lessons that those campaigning for Britain to either stay in, or leave, the European Union should bear in mind.  

1. Lesson 1: A broad coalition matters

In both previous UK-wide referendums (in 1975 on whether to stay in the European Community and in 2011 on whether to adopt the Alternative Vote system) voters opted for the status quo.  It is striking that in both cases, the larger part of the main party of government, and a significant part of the main party of opposition, were on the winning side.  “Yes” in 1975 and “No” in 2011 were the choices of a broad coalition from the most important parts of the political establishment; their opponents were more marginal figures.

2. Lesson 2: Don’t take anything for granted, including the polls

Moving across the water, Ireland is unique in the EU in putting every new Treaty to a referendum – there have been 9 such votes so far.  The “No” votes in the Irish referendums on both the Nice Treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 demonstrated that a cross-party consensus between the government and opposition leaders is not always sufficient.  In both these referendums, the polls largely predicted a “Yes” vote, but the Irish people ended up voting “No” both times.  

3. Lesson 3: Second chances are rare

These two negative Irish votes, and also Denmark’s (very narrow) rejection of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, were all subsequently overturned at second referendums, after further negotiations with the EU.  Similarly, some believe that a “No” vote from the UK would result in better terms being offered by the EU.  But these three cases were exceptional; in all of them the first result was close, the issues needing resolving were easily identified, and all other EU member states had an interest in seeing a multilateral process succeed.  These circumstances are unlikely to be replicated around the UK vote (or even around last December’s unsuccessful Danish referendum on EU opt-outs).  More pertinent, perhaps, is the example of the referendum on the Annan Plan to reunify Cyprus in April 2004.  Voters believed that by voting “No” they would get a better offer.  Greek Cypriots voted “No” by three to one; eleven years on, they are still waiting for that better offer to come.  

4. Lesson 4: Don’t get hung up on the detail

In the Cyprus referendum, voters were asked to ratify a 170 page set of treaties with 9,000 pages of dependent draft legislation, which had been negotiated into its final form less than a month before the vote. The “Yes” campaign therefore had a moving target, and could barely be sure what they were asking voters to endorse. ;The lesson for the UK is that pro-EU campaigners cannot afford to “wait and see” what concessions the government comes back with from its negotiations with EU partners. The argument will likely be won or lost on the big picture, not on the detail. If the pro-EU campaign finds itself compelled to enlarge upon particular elements of the deal rather than the question as a whole, that is a bad sign; if you’re explaining, you’re already losing.

5. Lesson 5: Keep positive

The “Better Together” campaign opposing Scottish independence was widely felt to have won the vote but lost the argument, by concentrating on fear and uncertainty rather than putting forward a positive vision for Scotland’s future.  Scottish pro-independence campaigners successfully portrayed the restoration of an independence which had been given up in 1707 as a step forward.  In Ireland, the 2015 campaign for legalising same-sex marriage focused on the tangible benefits for families and for all of society of a reform which directly affected only a few.  The “no” side unsuccessfully tried to play on uncertainty and fear of change.

6. Lesson 6: use social media

Opinion among campaigners is divided about how much social media really matters in campaigning.  Few, however, would argue that it does not matter at all.  Cyberspace has been a crucial venue for mobilising and encouraging supporters for many years.  But surveys now show that an increasing number of voters – particularly younger voters – rely on Facebook and Twitter, and no other sources, for news and information about politics.  Nobody can win without establishing at least a bridgehead on the online battlefront.

7. Lesson 7: develop your ground game

Traditional door-to-door campaigning still matters as well – if anything, a personal contact with a campaigner, in an increasingly impersonal world, can often be the decisive factor in how a voter chooses to vote.  In Scotland, the “Yes” campaign “delivered more leaflets, put up more posters, set up more stalls and knocked on more doors”.  In Ireland, the equal marriage “Yes” campaign brought together a wide range of civil society organizations into a broad-based coalition that was immensely successful in getting voters to the polls.  By contrast, the UK pro-Alternative Vote campaign in 2011 never got its ground campaign together.  

The difference between winning and losing the coming referendum on the UK’s relationship with the EU will turn on these questions.  Who has the broader coalition? Who is better prepared for unwelcome polling news? Who can more convincingly frame the consequences of a “No” vote? Who can keep the argument broad? Who is perceived to be more positive? Who is more convincing online? And, perhaps most of all, who is better at mobilising volunteers to take their argument to the voters? We have an interesting few months ahead.

An EU-wide constituency: Be careful what you wish for!

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 26 November 2015. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

On 11 November the European Parliament called for a series of changes to future elections of its own members, including a common minimum voting age across EU states, electoral thresholds in the larger countries, guaranteed voting rights for EU citizens living abroad, and a requirement to finalise candidate lists promptly. 

Most of all, the Parliament wants to enshrine the Spitzenkandidat system used in the 2014 election – where the nominee of the largest political group was presented as the Parliament’s choice for President of the European Commission – by setting up a single EU-wide electoral constituency, for which all transnational European parties would nominate their Spitzenkandidaten.

But how would this look in practice? Last year, the centre-right European People’s Party claimed victory, and anointed Jean-Claude Juncker as the voters’ choice, by winning 215 seats in the new European Parliament to the 185 won by the Party of European Socialists, who supported European Parliament President Martin Schulz. 

It is not generally realized that if there had been a single EU-wide constituency, Schulz would likely have been the winner. The fact is that the EPP got slightly fewer votes than the PES,but ended up with more seats. Wikipedia, which also includes votes for MEPs who joined the groups after the election, gives the PES 40.2 million votes to the EPP’s 38.6 million; my own calculations, counting only those who were affiliated on election day, make the gap much narrower, 39.6 million to 39.3 million, but the outcome is still clear.)

The EPP won more seats with fewer votes for three reasons. First, the EPP is stronger than the PES in most of the smaller EU member states, where MEPs represent fewer electors per capita. So, rather small leads in terms of votes delivered disproportionate benefits in terms of seats in Slovenia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Croatia, Ireland and Bulgaria. Denmark was the only smaller state where the PES won more seats than the EPP. 

Second, the PES lead in votes was diluted in some countries by relatively high turnout. Among the enthusiastic voters of Italy, the Partito Democratico won 31 seats with 11 million votes, while three EPP groups won 17 seats between them with just under 6 million votes. But that 14-seat margin in favour of the PES, gained by 5 million more votes, was more than counterbalanced by the result in low-turnout Poland, where two EPP groups had a combined lead of only 2 million votes over the centre-left, yet won 18 more seats.

Third, the electoral system in some countries, whether by accident or design, favours the EPP. In Belgium and in Italy, there are reserved single seats for German-speaking minorities, who tend to vote for EPP-affiliated candidates. In Ireland, Fine Gael won four seats for the EPP – 36% of the country’s 11 seats – with only 22% of the votes, while Labour, with 5% of the votes won no seats at all. (Fine Gael actually won fewer votes in Ireland than ALDE-linked Fianna Fail; but the latter elected only one MEP, and he promptly defected after the election.)

Looking further down the ticket, the situation becomes even murkier. The third-placed party in the European Parliament at present is the conservative ECR grouping, with 75 MEPs. But in terms of the popular vote (according to Wikipedia’s figures), they came not third but seventh, with 8.6 million votes to 9.2 million for the Greens/EFA, 10.8 million for the UKIP-led EFDD, 11.7 million for the liberal ALDE and just over 12 million for the hard-left GUE, who have only 51 MEPs. Like the EPP, the ECR benefited from picking up easily won seats in smaller countries, and by doing well in two large countries with low turnouts, the UK and Poland.

Those who want to open up the strengths and weaknesses of the European Parliament elections to further public interest should be careful what they ask for – because they may get it. It’s entirely possible to imagine a situation where a Spitzenkandidatwins a decisive lead in the EU-wide popular vote, but his or her party lags badly in terms of seats in the European Parliament. Arguably that is actually what happened last year. A single European constituency, by exposing the disconnection between votes won and seats gained, may weaken the credibility of the process in practice. 

The European Parliament flexes its muscles-in Albania

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 1 July 2002. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

On June 24 the Albanian parliament elected retired general Alfred Moisiu as the country’s new President, ending a period of political uncertainty that had lasted since last year’s disputed parliamentary elections. The European Parliament’s role in resolving Albania’s political difficulties has been more significant than most observers realise.

Last year’s parliamentary elections in Albania were not a completely untroubled event. Voting was originally scheduled for two rounds on 24 June and 8 July 2001, but repeated polls called as a result of electoral disputes lasted until 19 August. The OSCE/ODIHR report on the elections, finally released on 11 October, found serious flaws in the running of the elections and blamed the Socialist Party-led government in particular. However, it concluded that the government had nonetheless won re-election, even if the extent of its victory remained a matter of dispute.

International attention at the time was concentrated on containing the conflict in neighbouring Macedonia, and the preliminary reports from ODIHR after the early stages of the vote had been relatively positive. Because the elections were relatively peaceful compared with previous campaigns, and because the many disputes were sorted out with varying degrees of efficiency and neutrality by the system, most observers concluded that the vote could be considered as a modest success.

In addition, the Prime Minister, Ilir Meta, had an exceptionally good reputation as a reformer in western capitals, and his victory was welcomed as a sign of stability – the only reformist government to have won re-election in the Balkans to date. It seemed entirely credible that Albania’s progress might be recognised in the shape of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Union; such agreements had already been signed with Macedonia and Croatia.

Once all the counting had finished, the Socialist Party and its coalition allies had won a total of 87 seats of the 140 up for election. The vital factor here was that the President of Albania is elected by the Parliament, and a successful candidate must have the support of 60% of all MPs. The fact that the government coalition had managed to get a few more than 84 out of 140 seats meant that, other things being equal, they could expect to easily impose their own candidate when the election came in June 2002.

The opposition, led by former President Sali Berisha, therefore boycotted the new parliament when it met in September, arguing that any president elected under such circumstances would lack legitimacy because of the tainted nature of the government victory, and demanding fresh elections under new legislation. Berisha claimed further support from the OSCE report when it finally appeared. However it was apparent to Berisha’s supporters that the tactic was not working, and that rather than damaging Prime Minister Meta’s reputation, it was in fact reinforcing the perception that Berisha was unreliable and a sore loser. The OSCE actually called on Berisha to end the boycott.

The gloomy political landscape shifted again toward the end of 2001, when an open dispute broke out between Fatos Nano, the leader of the Socialist Party, and Prime Minister Meta, with each accusing the other’s supporters of corruption and bitter words being exchanged at party and parliamentary meetings. It became apparent that neither faction within the Socialist Party could rely on the full support of the governing coalition, and it suddenly seemed a very real prospect that there might be two Socialist candidates for the position of President, with Berisha – if he were to participate in the parliament – wielding a casting vote.

At this point the European Parliament became an actor in the process. A number of Albanian politicians were invited to participate in a meeting of its Foreign Affairs Committee on 24 January 2002. The event was a stormy one, with MEPs led by rapporteur Doris Pack sharply criticising both sides for their lack of responsibility and political maturity. Sharp divisions were apparent between the Albanians present, with the Minister for European Integration visibly bruised from a physical assault the previous evening. The visitors were told that unless they got their act together there was no chance of further European integration, or of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement.

This meeting was of crucial importance because it brought home to Berisha the extent of the international community’s lack of sympathy for his boycott. He declared on his return to Albania that he would lead the opposition back into parliament; the Foreign Affairs Committee had given him some political cover by endorsing his demand that the government enact the recommendations of the ODIHR report on the elections, enabling him to retreat with some dignity.

By now relations within the Socialist Party had broken down and Meta resigned as Prime Minister on 29 January. His predecessor, Pandeli Majko, who like Meta is in his early 30s, was persuaded to return to his old job and brought in a new government balanced between supporters of Nano and Meta. Nano formally declared himself a candidate for the post of President. Berisha rapidly discovered that he was able to use his supporters in parliament to exploit the differences within the government, on occasion supporting one faction against the other. He was also very aware that if the parliament was unable to elect a President with 60% support, new elections must follow.

At this point the European Parliament again took a hand. During April and May, Doris Pack navigated a resolution through the Foreign Affairs Committee urging the leaders of both government and opposition to find a joint candidate for the post of president. (The incumbent, low-key physics professor Rexhep Meidani, quietly indicated that he was available, but nobody seemed interested.) The message delivered in public by the European Parliament was also delivered in private by European diplomats; the General Affairs Council expressed the hope that the “presidential election would be conducted in such a manner that would preserve political stability”.

Faced with external pressure as well as the impasse within his own party, Nano finally gave in and on Friday 21 June, three days before the election was due, agreed on a joint candidate with Berisha and duly announced their choice. The lucky man was Artur Kuko, Albania’s Ambassador to the European Union, who is a familiar figure in Brussels since he previously served as Ambassador to NATO during the Kosovo bombing in 1999. Nano and Berisha had however not done their background work. Kuko very much enjoys living in Brussels, is preparing intensively for serious negotiations with the European Union, and therefore declined the offer, causing some embarrassment for the political classes in Tirana.

A substitute candidate was quickly found and duly elected with 97 votes out of 140, well ahead of the 84-vote threshold and with support from both government and opposition. The new President, 74-year-old retired general Alfred Moisiu, had served as defence minister under both communist and anti-communist governments, and is regarded as someone who can revive Albanian’s faltering aspirations of joining NATO in the near future. For the country as a whole, the civilised if not completely transparent conduct of the election is an important milestone.

But the affair also marks an interesting development for the European Union. At the time of the last presidential election in 1997, Albania was emerging from a year long political crisis caused by the hotly disputed parliamentary elections of 1996 and the collapse of the pyramid investment schemes. Europe’s institutions had failed to provide the necessary peace-keeping force, which had eventually been scraped together in a coalition of the willing led by the then Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi.

In 2002, the European Parliament, which is far from the most powerful organ of the EU, has successfully intervened twice, once in providing a forum for the resolution of the boycott issue, and a second time in giving an institutional voice to the international pressure to find a single presidential candidate. The last few years have seen significant interventions from the much more visible personality of Javier Solana as the High Representative for foreign policy, notably in Macedonia in 2001 and in brokering the agreement between Serbia and Montenegro in 2002. The Albanian episode shows that less powerful institutions, in a less obvious way, can score their successes as well.

Justice for All

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 2 July 2001. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

The extradition of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague on 28 June – the anniversary both of the battle of Kosovo in 1389 and of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 – is a historical turning point not only for Serbia but for the international community as a whole. 

For Serbia, it puts a full stop to the downfall of the Milosevic regime. The arrest and extradition of Milosevic’s co-defendants, who include the current President of Serbia, can now be only a matter of time. The removal of the worst of the old regime, combined with the discrediting of their policies as the truth gradually emerges, will aid the rehabilitation of a healthy Serbian society, ready to become a positive centre of gravity in its region.

The turmoil that Milosevic’s extradition caused in the Yugoslav government will expose the remaining institutions of the FRY. Leaders in both Serbia and Montenegro appear to be drifting towards an accommodation; if the Yugoslav institutions are unworkable and unnecessary; it may prove as easy to dispense with them. In late 2000, moderates in Serbia suddenly became less enthusiastic about the Federal Republic when it became clear that they would have to work with Milosevic’s former allies in Montenegro. The latter now realise that the cost of power in Yugoslavia is that they will have to accept the dominance of the Serbian moderates’ political agenda. This may in the end be too high a price to pay.

For the Republika Srpska in Bosnia, it is clear that the net must now also close on the key indictees for war crimes from the 1992-95 period. This will strengthen the entity’s institutions of government, which have remained vulnerable to the forces of atavistic nationalism even under the leadership of committed reformers. This in turn will give the Dayton institutions of government a fair test in what can almost be called “normal” conditions. 

For Croatia the consequences could be troubling. The government, which lost one of its six coalition partners recently, feels under pressure from the right-wing supporters of the late President Tudjman. So far the Hague tribunal has issued no indictments for Croatian army war crimes during or after the recapture of Serb occupied territories in 1995, but it is known to be investigating. The trial in a domestic court of a Croatian general for war crimes in 1991 is already proving controversial; indictments from the Hague for the 1995 events will add further strains.

Most of all, the extradition of Milosevic is a tremendous boost for the planned International Criminal Court. It means that the practitioners of statecraft in all countries in the future can expect to be held to higher standards than has been the case in the past. The strengthening of the concept of justice in international relations will be unwelcome to rulers who expected to remain unaccountable for their actions. Their loss; a gain for the rest of us.

The EU and Macedonia

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(This was originally published by EurActiv on 6 April 2001. In February 2025 I requested that it be deleted from the Euractiv site.)

The small country’s second city, far off in its northwestern corner, is a stronghold of its minority population. Cut off from their ethnic kin across the border at the beginning of the twentieth century by the arbitrary decisions of an international treaty, they have not found it easy to participate in the new state. Their grievances include high unemployment, the funding of the university that they believe their city should rightfully have, and vivid memories of civilians who were shot dead by security forces in bitterly disputed circumstances. 

This city has two names, Derry and Londonderry. In 1984, a junior British Minister had to decide which name could be used by the City Council, a decision as important and as symbolic as deciding which flag should fly on the town hall. Historically the official name was Londonderry, and Protestants demanded that this name be kept as a reminder of their cultural heritage. However the Minister decided, after much reflection, to change the official name of the city to Derry, the name used by the majority of its population. 

This British Minister has moved on to other things. His name is Chris Patten, and he is now the European Union’s Commissioner for External Relations. However, anyone who wants to understand the EU’s approach to the problems of Macedonia should begin by examining what the EU’s member states have done in their own territories. Patten has personal experience of both Ireland and Hong Kong. Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, has personal experience of a transition to democracy and the problems of dealing with Basque and Catalonian demands for autonomy in his own country. Their personal experiences are the background against which EU policy is formed.

For Macedonia, this is no bad thing. Some outsiders – particularly those journalists who like dramatic stories of conflict, blood and ancient hatred- automatically assume that any armed insurgents must have the majority of the population on their side. However, both Patten and Solana know that the IRA’s violence never had the support of a majority of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and that ETA has never had the support of a majority of Basques in Spain. On the other hand, both have experience of the negotiations that are necessary to reconcile the ambitions of different parts of a divided country; how to satisfy the reasonable demands of a minority population without sacrificing the rule of law and the confidence of the majority. 

Both men know that it is not an easy process, and neither is keen to make any specific demands for reforms from the Macedonian government apart from setting up some more visible process of national dialogue than has hitherto existed. Neither Patten nor Solana will want to see the political representatives of any terrorist group brought into the official negotiation process, while violence continues. And even in the event of a ceasefire, they will be sympathetic – perhaps even too sympathetic – to Macedonian reluctance to talk to people who have recently been using guns rather than words.

Both men also know that an excessive government reaction against terrorism can be counterproductive. Solana’s party lost office in 1996 when the truth emerged about the anti-terrorist militias which it had sponsored to act against ETA ten years before. Bloody Sunday, when 14 civilians in Derry were killed by British soldiers in 1972, is still a live issue in Northern Ireland. When the EU and NATO urge restraint on the Macedonian government, it is because they have learned their own lessons the hard way.

Britain and Spain are old powers, which have lost their empires but are adapting to a European future. Their borders with their neighbours are not an issue to get excited about. Their internal organisation of course can always be reformed, but this does not mean that the country will cease to exist. Autonomy for Scotland, Wales, Catalunya or Euskadi is not the end of the United Kingdom or of Spain. The use of Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan or Basque may irritate those who prefer English or Spanish, but it is generally accepted that people have a right to their own official language in their own communities.

Therefore, neither Patten nor Solana understands the insecurity within Macedonia about the country’s very existence. There is no sensitivity in Brussels to the perception in South-Eastern Europe that borders have been changed arbitrarily in the recent past and, that this could easily happen again. When the British Foreign Secretary says, “It is time that we asserted that the borders within the region are inviolable and cannot be changed by violence,” he does not mean that the policy should be changed, he means that what seems to him a self-evident truth should be stated again for those who don’t seem to believe it. 

The signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement on 9 April is therefore significant because it shows that the EU accepts Macedonia, within its current borders, as an associated state, with all the mechanisms that applied with the Europe Agreements, updated to account for ten years of experience and of evolution in the EU’s structures. The Agreement also includes some pointers towards the sorts of regional cooperation that are expected of Macedonia and of the other countries in the Western Balkans, which are not much more substantive than the existing provisions of the Stability Pact.

It is also a signal that the EU accepts Macedonia as a future member. Not too quickly, though. It is now accepted in the EU that the next enlargement will include several Central European countries and will take place before 2005, maybe even in 2003. There is a reluctance to give commitments on imminent membership to any other countries, really because the EU does not completely trust in the competence of its own structures to cope with the burdens of Eastern Europe. In the fourth century, St Augustine famously wanted to become virtuous, “but not just yet”. Similarly the EU wants to include the Western Balkans, “but not just yet”. 

The present policy is thus to allow Macedonia to join the regatta of countries in the queue for EU membership at some time in the next ten, twenty, thirty years. This is all very well, but is it imaginative enough? It may sound convincing on the Rue de la Loi in Brussels; but the people who need to be reassured of their European destiny are those who live in Gostivar, Prizren, Korce, Prijepolje, Bjelovar and Bijeljina. When they have time to do so, Patten and Solana should reflect on the positive contribution of the European dimension in managing the problems of their own countries, and they should begin to think of how they can further accelerate the European integration of the Balkans. Full membership of the EU or NATO for Macedonia is a very long way off. We may not have the luxury of waiting.