The European Union will only be reconciled with its citizens when they will be able to identify leaders at the level of the institutions

Ruyt, Jean De

Archive of European Integration

h 
 
 
Royal Institute for International Relations
   
No. 2 
June 2011 No. 33 
March 2014 
Who is leading the European Union? 
Jean De Ruyt 
 
2014 witnessed an impressive changing of the 
guard at the top of the EU institutions: Jean 
Claude Juncker, the eternal prime minister of 
Luxemburg, was ‘elected’ as the head of the 
Commission; the European Council chose its 
president, Donald Tusk, from the new 
Member States; and Matteo Renzi’s success in 
the European elections allowed him to have 
Italy’s Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini 
appointed as the new High Representative.  
In the meantime, two new conflicts developed 
in our neighbourhood: the war against the 
Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – which struck 
the Union at its core through several terrorist 
actions – and the crisis in Ukraine, which 
confirmed the imperial ambitions of Putin’s 
Russia and our weakness in countering them.  
The EU also continued to suffer the 
consequences of austerity policies, the rise of 
Euroscepticism and a new crisis in Greece 
following the victory of Syriza in a national 
election. And, in a few months, an election in 
the United Kingdom threatens to shake its 
deepest foundations.  
HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THESE 
CHALLENGES?  
Does the new institutional setting put in place 
by the Lisbon Treaty give the institutions the 
tools to exert leadership and show the way 
ahead?  
The answer at first glance is not very positive: 
the initiative for a war against the Islamic State 
originates from the United States and the 
efforts to stop the Ukraine crisis are centred 
for the moment in the ‘Normandy’ format – 
with Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, 
but not the EU itself.  
As for the economic crisis, national leaders 
continue to blame the EU, which makes it as 
difficult for the Commission to launch 
initiatives as it is for British politicians to 
convince their voters that their country should 
stay in the Union. And when it comes to 
solving the Greek debt problem, the direction 
continues to be dictated by Berlin, as it has 
been since the beginning of the Eurozone 
crisis.  
One could argue it’s always been this way: 
since its beginnings as the European 
Economic Community, the Union was always 
led ‘from behind’ by its major Member States 
– with strong outside input from Washington 
in the security field.  
The European Union will only be 
reconciled with its citizens when 
they will be able to identify leaders 
at the level of the institutions.  
 
 
 
  
 
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
2 
 
But at the same time, step by step, more power 
has been given to the institutions and their 
leaders: since Maastricht, and with Jacques 
Delors as a model, the powers of the president 
of the Commission have increased from treaty 
to treaty; the High Representative, who had a 
modest mandate at the time of Javier Solana, 
has now replaced the rotating presidency in 
foreign policy and is a vice president of the 
Commission; and the added value of a 
permanent president for the European 
Council has been amply demonstrated in the 
last five years by Herman Van Rompuy.  
The question is thus: is the current situation 
the end of the game or just a step in the 
development of ‘an ever-closer Union’? Will 
Member States gradually cease to lead the 
Union from behind? Will we, in a not so 
distant future, have a president of Europe 
modelled on the president of the United 
States?  
It is obviously not possible to answer these 
questions now – just as it was not possible to 
believe in the 1980s that we would have a 
common currency by 2000. The negotiators of 
the Amsterdam Treaty would never have 
dared to sketch the profile of the triple-hatted 
High Representative, and when in 2004 Tony 
Blair vetoed the appointment of Guy 
Verhofstadt as president of the Commission, 
he probably did not anticipate that Barroso’ s 
successor would be imposed on the European 
Council by the European Parliament.  
Leadership at the level of the institutions may 
be developing but the pace is too slow for 
today’s growing challenges – and the 
expectations of EU citizens.  
Indeed, when asked, many in Europe and in 
third countries seem to believe that the Union 
would work better if it had real leaders at the 
level of the institutions. Several 
Eurobarometers during the Constitutional 
Treaty crisis confirmed this. And when the 
Lisbon Treaty entered into force, Tony Blair, 
one of the most prominent European leaders, 
was the clear candidate to become the first 
permanent European Council president.  
However, when the time came for the 
Member States to choose, Tony Blair was not 
selected, and a US-style presidential election 
remains at best a distant prospect. Any 
suggestion that the president of the 
Commission should chair the European 
Council is seen by many in academic circles as 
a provocation.  
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO DEVELOP 
REAL LEADERSHIP AT EU LEVEL?  
The answer lies in the famous ‘inter-
institutional balance’, one of the main 
foundations of the European construction. 
The compromise between an ever-closer 
Union and respect for national sovereignty 
was key to the success of the Communities 
and later of the EU. This compromise implied 
that supra-nationality would remain diffuse 
and under strict control, managed at distance 
in the Member States’ capitals – although 
notably only by a few. 
The problem with this ‘leadership from 
behind’ is that it no longer sits well with 
current challenges. Contrary to Eurosceptics’ 
wishes, the Union has more responsibilities 
than ever. The common interests of EU 
citizens have become much more important 
than that which divides them – and European 
regulations are increasingly impacting the 
everyday lives of the people.  
It is thus quite logical that people are suffering 
from being ruled by leaders they did not 
choose – or cannot well identify. This is one 
of the main reasons for the disenchantment of 
  
 
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
3 
 
EU citizens, regrettably confirmed by the 
recent European election results of 2014. To 
be more popular, the EU needs real leaders, 
but given its current unpopularity, citizens will 
not willingly deliver more power to its 
institutions. 
HOW DO WE ESCAPE THIS VICIOUS 
CIRCLE? 
The challenge for institutional leaders is to 
demonstrate daily their added value. They can 
only assert their authority if they can 
demonstrate that their actions allow the Union 
to function to greater effect. From that 
perspective, there is ample room for them to 
occupy the political playground.  
Even in the 1980s, Delors was able to 
demonstrate the ‘added value’ of an 
institutional leader managing European 
Community affairs. The High Representative 
role was created to manage crises at our 
borders which could not be dealt with by the 
rotating presidency – or individual Member 
States. A permanent president of the 
European Council was, as mentioned, 
indispensable to managing the euro crisis.  
The first task of the institutional leaders is to 
propose solutions to the Member States – 
something Delors excelled at. Their 
responsibility is to channel national initiatives, 
to bring positions closer to each other, to 
bring a lost sheep back into the fold – and save 
its face. Their success relies on consistency of 
promises and actions and close cooperation 
with leaders of the Member States and those 
of third countries.  
The opacity of the decision-making process at 
the European level will remain. It comes from 
the complexity of the ‘institutional triangle’, 
which no one outside the Brussels inner circle 
can ever begin to understand. National leaders 
usually only publicise what makes them look 
good – and tend to make the EU the 
scapegoat for their own weaknesses. 
Furthermore, most European MPs remain far 
too distant from those who voted for them. 
The citizen should be able to better 
understand what is at stake: European 
institutional leaders need to be able to 
communicate directly and effectively with the 
citizens, in language they understand. But to 
be heard, they need to speak with the authority 
of someone taking responsibility for what they 
are saying. 
WILL THE NEW LEADERS ACCELERATE 
THE PROCESS?  
Doubts can be expressed about the legitimacy 
of the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure but the 
spring 2014 saga demonstrated that there is at 
least a real political will within EU political 
circles – and in parts of public opinion – to 
reinforce the power of the institutional leaders 
of the Union.  
Jean Claude Juncker has thus a certain 
legitimacy in pretending that his Commission 
will be more political and his Commissioners 
more directly responsible for initiating and 
implementing the policies defined by the 
College – even if it is not yet clear if the double 
tier system he put in place will prevent 
precisely this from happening.  
Juncker will probably take over most of the 
economic policy responsibilities that the 
European Council gave its own president at 
the time of Herman Van Rompuy, and 
Donald Tusk will increase the role of the 
president of the European Council in Foreign 
Policy. There are already clear signs of these 
changes.  
  
 
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
4 
 
It would in one sense re-establish orthodoxy 
with regard to the competences of the 
Commission, but if Tusk continues, as he has 
already begun, to take initiatives in foreign 
policy, it would also be a very broad 
interpretation of his foreign policy mandate as 
defined by the Treaty.  
The new European Council president cannot 
be blamed for doing more than just 
‘representing the Union at his level’ in 
Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) 
matters. He’s put his finger on a weakness in 
the Lisbon Treaty system: a crisis of a 
magnitude of the Ukraine is not managed by 
foreign ministers but by the heads of state and 
government. Mogherini, who according to the 
treaty is supposed to ‘conduct’ CFSP, cannot 
really interact at that level: her interlocutors 
are John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, not Obama 
and Putin. At the top level, the EU can only 
offer the duo of the president of the Council 
and of the Commission and, for foreign policy 
issues, the president of the European Council 
– or Angela Merkel and François Hollande.  
The most powerful current EU leader 
remained a rather unknown figure until the 
2008 economic crisis: the president of the 
European Central Bank. Europe would not be 
what it is today if Mario Draghi had not 
exerted a more than convincing leadership at 
the head of the ECB. His advantage lies in the 
fact that he is supposed to be independent, but 
even when his independence was challenged, 
he was able to take decisions, to make those 
decisions acceptable and to explain them to 
the public. He is the best model for the 
argument I wish to make.  
Federica Mogherini was greeted with 
scepticism when Matteo Renzi ‘imposed’ her 
as High Representative. But since then, she 
has demonstrated her competence in foreign 
policy, and the diplomatic skills required to 
obtain the indispensable consensus of 
Member States for her initiatives.  
This remains the most important 
consideration: as mentioned above, it is not 
for the current institutional actors to take over 
the competences of the Member States as they 
are exerted through the Council and the 
European Council – or at the national level. 
With the exception of instances when the 
Commission acts as a college for specific 
community matters, the institutional leaders 
can only assert their authority if there is 
consensus among the Member States. But it is 
also their task to shape this consensus – and 
to demonstrate that their actions allow the 
Union to function to greater effect.  
Jean De Ruyt is a senior career diplomat, who 
has been ambassador of Belgium to the EU, 
the UN and NATO. Currently he is a Senior 
Policy Advisor for Covington & Burling in 
Brussels and he serves on the Board of 
McLarty Associates in Washington. He is also 
a visiting Professor at both Louvain University 
and the College of Europe in Natolin. 
 
The European Policy Brief is a publication of Egmont, the 
Royal Institute for International Relations
EGMONT 
Royal Institute for International Relations 
Naamsestraat 69 
1000 Brussels 
BELGIUM 
  
> www.egmontinstitute.be 
The opinions expressed in this Policy Brief are those of the 
authors and are not those of EGMONT, Royal Institute for 
International Relations 
 
The European Policy Brief is a publication of Egmont, the 
Royal Institute for International Relations
EGMONT 
Royal Institute for International Relations 
Naamsestraat 69 
1000 Brussels 
BELGIUM 
  
> www.egmontinstitute.be 
The opinions expressed in this Policy Brief are those of the 


Who is leading the European Union? European Policy Brief No. 33, March 2014

h   Royal Institute for International Relations   No. 2 June 2011 No. 33 March 2014 Who is leading the European Union? Jean De Ruyt  2014 witnessed an impressive changing of the guard at the top of the EU institutions: Jean Claude Juncker, the eternal prime minister of Luxemburg, was ‘elected’ as the head of the Commission; the European Council chose its president, Donald Tusk, from the new Member States; and Matteo Renzi’s success in the European elections allowed him to have Italy’s Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini appointed as the new High Representative.  In the meantime, two new conflicts developed in our neighbourhood: the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – which struck the Union at its core through several terrorist actions – and the crisis in Ukraine, which confirmed the imperial ambitions of Putin’s Russia and our weakness in countering them.  The EU also continued to suffer the consequences of austerity policies, the rise of Euroscepticism and a new crisis in Greece following the victory of Syriza in a national election. And, in a few months, an election in the United Kingdom threatens to shake its deepest foundations.  HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THESE CHALLENGES?  Does the new institutional setting put in place by the Lisbon Treaty give the institutions the tools to exert leadership and show the way ahead?  The answer at first glance is not very positive: the initiative for a war against the Islamic State originates from the United States and the efforts to stop the Ukraine crisis are centred for the moment in the ‘Normandy’ format – with Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, but not the EU itself.  As for the economic crisis, national leaders continue to blame the EU, which makes it as difficult for the Commission to launch initiatives as it is for British politicians to convince their voters that their country should stay in the Union. And when it comes to solving the Greek debt problem, the direction continues to be dictated by Berlin, as it has been since the beginning of the Eurozone crisis.  One could argue it’s always been this way: since its beginnings as the European Economic Community, the Union was always led ‘from behind’ by its major Member States – with strong outside input from Washington in the security field.  The European Union will only be reconciled with its citizens when they will be able to identify leaders at the level of the institutions.         EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  2  But at the same time, step by step, more power has been given to the institutions and their leaders: since Maastricht, and with Jacques Delors as a model, the powers of the president of the Commission have increased from treaty to treaty; the High Representative, who had a modest mandate at the time of Javier Solana, has now replaced the rotating presidency in foreign policy and is a vice president of the Commission; and the added value of a permanent president for the European Council has been amply demonstrated in the last five years by Herman Van Rompuy.  The question is thus: is the current situation the end of the game or just a step in the development of ‘an ever-closer Union’? Will Member States gradually cease to lead the Union from behind? Will we, in a not so distant future, have a president of Europe modelled on the president of the United States?  It is obviously not possible to answer these questions now – just as it was not possible to believe in the 1980s that we would have a common currency by 2000. The negotiators of the Amsterdam Treaty would never have dared to sketch the profile of the triple-hatted High Representative, and when in 2004 Tony Blair vetoed the appointment of Guy Verhofstadt as president of the Commission, he probably did not anticipate that Barroso’ s successor would be imposed on the European Council by the European Parliament.  Leadership at the level of the institutions may be developing but the pace is too slow for today’s growing challenges – and the expectations of EU citizens.  Indeed, when asked, many in Europe and in third countries seem to believe that the Union would work better if it had real leaders at the level of the institutions. Several Eurobarometers during the Constitutional Treaty crisis confirmed this. And when the Lisbon Treaty entered into force, Tony Blair, one of the most prominent European leaders, was the clear candidate to become the first permanent European Council president.  However, when the time came for the Member States to choose, Tony Blair was not selected, and a US-style presidential election remains at best a distant prospect. Any suggestion that the president of the Commission should chair the European Council is seen by many in academic circles as a provocation.  WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO DEVELOP REAL LEADERSHIP AT EU LEVEL?  The answer lies in the famous ‘inter-institutional balance’, one of the main foundations of the European construction. The compromise between an ever-closer Union and respect for national sovereignty was key to the success of the Communities and later of the EU. This compromise implied that supra-nationality would remain diffuse and under strict control, managed at distance in the Member States’ capitals – although notably only by a few. The problem with this ‘leadership from behind’ is that it no longer sits well with current challenges. Contrary to Eurosceptics’ wishes, the Union has more responsibilities than ever. The common interests of EU citizens have become much more important than that which divides them – and European regulations are increasingly impacting the everyday lives of the people.  It is thus quite logical that people are suffering from being ruled by leaders they did not choose – or cannot well identify. This is one of the main reasons for the disenchantment of     EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  3  EU citizens, regrettably confirmed by the recent European election results of 2014. To be more popular, the EU needs real leaders, but given its current unpopularity, citizens will not willingly deliver more power to its institutions. HOW DO WE ESCAPE THIS VICIOUS CIRCLE? The challenge for institutional leaders is to demonstrate daily their added value. They can only assert their authority if they can demonstrate that their actions allow the Union to function to greater effect. From that perspective, there is ample room for them to occupy the political playground.  Even in the 1980s, Delors was able to demonstrate the ‘added value’ of an institutional leader managing European Community affairs. The High Representative role was created to manage crises at our borders which could not be dealt with by the rotating presidency – or individual Member States. A permanent president of the European Council was, as mentioned, indispensable to managing the euro crisis.  The first task of the institutional leaders is to propose solutions to the Member States – something Delors excelled at. Their responsibility is to channel national initiatives, to bring positions closer to each other, to bring a lost sheep back into the fold – and save its face. Their success relies on consistency of promises and actions and close cooperation with leaders of the Member States and those of third countries.  The opacity of the decision-making process at the European level will remain. It comes from the complexity of the ‘institutional triangle’, which no one outside the Brussels inner circle can ever begin to understand. National leaders usually only publicise what makes them look good – and tend to make the EU the scapegoat for their own weaknesses. Furthermore, most European MPs remain far too distant from those who voted for them. The citizen should be able to better understand what is at stake: European institutional leaders need to be able to communicate directly and effectively with the citizens, in language they understand. But to be heard, they need to speak with the authority of someone taking responsibility for what they are saying. WILL THE NEW LEADERS ACCELERATE THE PROCESS?  Doubts can be expressed about the legitimacy of the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure but the spring 2014 saga demonstrated that there is at least a real political will within EU political circles – and in parts of public opinion – to reinforce the power of the institutional leaders of the Union.  Jean Claude Juncker has thus a certain legitimacy in pretending that his Commission will be more political and his Commissioners more directly responsible for initiating and implementing the policies defined by the College – even if it is not yet clear if the double tier system he put in place will prevent precisely this from happening.  Juncker will probably take over most of the economic policy responsibilities that the European Council gave its own president at the time of Herman Van Rompuy, and Donald Tusk will increase the role of the president of the European Council in Foreign Policy. There are already clear signs of these changes.      EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  4  It would in one sense re-establish orthodoxy with regard to the competences of the Commission, but if Tusk continues, as he has already begun, to take initiatives in foreign policy, it would also be a very broad interpretation of his foreign policy mandate as defined by the Treaty.  The new European Council president cannot be blamed for doing more than just ‘representing the Union at his level’ in Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) matters. He’s put his finger on a weakness in the Lisbon Treaty system: a crisis of a magnitude of the Ukraine is not managed by foreign ministers but by the heads of state and government. Mogherini, who according to the treaty is supposed to ‘conduct’ CFSP, cannot really interact at that level: her interlocutors are John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, not Obama and Putin. At the top level, the EU can only offer the duo of the president of the Council and of the Commission and, for foreign policy issues, the president of the European Council – or Angela Merkel and François Hollande.  The most powerful current EU leader remained a rather unknown figure until the 2008 economic crisis: the president of the European Central Bank. Europe would not be what it is today if Mario Draghi had not exerted a more than convincing leadership at the head of the ECB. His advantage lies in the fact that he is supposed to be independent, but even when his independence was challenged, he was able to take decisions, to make those decisions acceptable and to explain them to the public. He is the best model for the argument I wish to make.  Federica Mogherini was greeted with scepticism when Matteo Renzi ‘imposed’ her as High Representative. But since then, she has demonstrated her competence in foreign policy, and the diplomatic skills required to obtain the indispensable consensus of Member States for her initiatives.  This remains the most important consideration: as mentioned above, it is not for the current institutional actors to take over the competences of the Member States as they are exerted through the Council and the European Council – or at the national level. With the exception of instances when the Commission acts as a college for specific community matters, the institutional leaders can only assert their authority if there is consensus among the Member States. But it is also their task to shape this consensus – and to demonstrate that their actions allow the Union to function to greater effect.  Jean De Ruyt is a senior career diplomat, who has been ambassador of Belgium to the EU, the UN and NATO. Currently he is a Senior Policy Advisor for Covington & Burling in Brussels and he serves on the Board of McLarty Associates in Washington. He is also a visiting Professor at both Louvain University and the College of Europe in Natolin.  The European Policy Brief is a publication of Egmont, the Royal Institute for International RelationsEGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations Naamsestraat 69 1000 Brussels BELGIUM   > www.egmontinstitute.be The opinions expressed in this Policy Brief are those of the authors and are not those of EGMONT, Royal Institute for International Relations  The European Policy Brief is a publication of Egmont, the Royal Institute for International RelationsEGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations Naamsestraat 69 1000 Brussels BELGIUM   > www.egmontinstitute.be The opinions expressed in this Policy Brief are those of the 

Who is leading the European Union? European Policy Brief No. 33, March 2014

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Archive of European Integration

Archive of European Integration