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Juncker, Tusk, Mogherini and the EU’s credibility crisis

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8 September, 2014
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Schweiger, C. (2014) “Juncker, Tusk, Mogherini and the EU’s credibility crisis“, Ideas on Europe Blog, 07 September.

 

After months of public wrangling and backroom discussions over the selection of the candidates for the vacancies of key institutional posts the EU is now finally in a position to address its mounting internal and external challenges with a new guard of official representatives. The selection process itself resembled very much the traditional style of backroom horse trading between heads of state which the public generally associates with the way business is done in the EU. Hopes which were raised in the run up to the May elections for the European Parliament that EU governments would genuinely conduct their business in a spirit of greater openness and collective solidarity were quickly dashed after the election had taken place. The fierce public dispute between national leaders on the selection of Jean-Claude Juncker as the new president of the European Commission effectively resulted in a stalemate at the special Brussels summit in July. The appointment of the new presidents of the Commission, the EU Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs were consequently delayed until the recent second special summit in August. The intermediate period was filled with speculations about intergovernmental deals for the appointment of these positions and public threats from the British government to veto Juncker’s appointment due to concerns that ‘a man from the 1980s’ would be unable to resolve the EU’s current challenges.The whole process ultimately resulted in Juncker’s appointment but left the UK and Hungary, who had both maintained their opposition to Juncker right until the end, isolated. The lack of unanimous support from EU leaders poses a question mark over how effectively the Juncker Commission will be able to implement a reform agenda which established a new universal consensus amongst national governments. This is highly problematic at a time when the EU faces growing and profound challenges.

Internally the EU is in a situation where it has become clear that the ambitious targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy in the area of education, training, research and development, social cohesion and environmental sustainability remain a distant ambition for many members states under persistent budgetary crisis conditions. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the subsequent eurozone sovereign debt crisis the EU hence remains trapped in a state of internal asymmetry. In practice this asymmetry manifests itself in a deepening centre-periphery divide both within the eurozone itself and also between the eurozone insiders and those countries who are currently on the outside. Inside the eurozone the crisis has created a cleavage between the core group of creditor countries spearheaded by Germany and the debtor countries who are predominantly situated in the Southern periphery. At the same time the multi-layered policy mechanisms, which EU leaders adopted in response to the eurozone crisis under the leadership of Angela Merkel, have created a new division in terms of the level of vertical policy coordination between the eurozone-18, the associated semi-periphery group of outsiders under the Euro Plus Pact and the Fiscal Compact and the relatively detached external periphery group. The latter group remains small and is currently only represented by the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. Moreover there is a realistic possibility that the Czech Republic under the leadership of Social Democratic PM Bohuslav Sobotka is moving towards the semi-periphery, while Hungary led by eurosceptic PM Viktor Orbán gradually retreats towards the outer fringe.

 

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