The EU has a presidential problem (and a navel-gazing one)

David M. Herszenhorn is POLITICO‘s chief Brussels correspondent.

So far, no one is predicting any concrete outcomes from the Conference on the Future of Europe, a roughly 15-month-long, Continent-wide self-scrutiny tour that is the brainchild — some would say devil-spawn — of French President Emmanuel Macron.

But if the EU wants to avoid making itself the butt of (more) jokes, one goal might be to rewrite the EU treaties to cut the number of officials that it calls “president.”

Or put another way, the conference might ask: how many EU presidents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Well, that requires figuring out how many presidents the EU has in the first place, which, depending on the institutions included, might be 10. Does the European Economic and Social Committee count? Then make it 11.

The overabundance of presidents was on full display Wednesday as European Parliament President David Sassoli, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, representing the presidency of the Council of the EU, gathered for a ceremony to formally initiate the conference and finally put to rest a year-long battle over who would be its president.

The EU’s institutions were deadlocked over an initial plan to name an “eminent European personality” to be in charge — partly over fears that such a personality, for example MEP and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, would perhaps be a bit too eminent and more than a little too federalist. The bigger concern was that such a champion of Brussels and its Bubble would steer toward an overall result out of step with the current mood in Europe, which seems to favor a socially-distant Union rather than an “ever closer” one.

As a result Macron’s grand idea for a Europe-wide discussion, the sort of thing that EU leaders often resist as a navel-gazing exercise, instead turned into a navel-gazing exercise about a navel-gazing exercise.

The outset of the coronavirus pandemic also removed some urgency from the project, as the prospect of a traveling troupe of Brussels officials, touring across 27 countries for a series of hours-long town hall meetings, suddenly seemed rather preposterous. (Not that it would necessarily be seen as reasonable in normal times, but theoretically it was still possible back when travel and crowded rooms were permitted.)

A protracted negotiation toward a not-so-eminent solution finally yielded an only-in-Brussels breakthrough. The presidents of three main institutions (Parliament, Commission and Council of the EU) would themselves serve as the honorary honchos of the conference, overseeing a nine-member executive board, assisted by a common “secretariat” — with decisions to be made by consensus. Clearly, this was intended to reassure EU citizens from Athens to Zagreb that Brussels was committed to ditching its bureaucratic reputation.

Save us, Emmanuel!

At any point, Macron might have decided to spare the EU and to pull the plug on this debacle of democracy, wrapped in a PR disaster, inside a comitology committee meeting re-envisioned as group therapy for citizens worried about the future of European governance. He did not.

Macron, no doubt, is still eager to trumpet the results of the conference — however muddled they might be — during the French presidency of the Council of the EU in spring 2022, which just happens to coincide with his own reelection campaign in France.

Ultimately, the fate of the conference came down to Dacian Cioloş, the leader of Macron’s Renew Europe group in the Parliament, who had been holding out for a deal by which Verhofstadt would have claimed the conference presidency. Cioloş, too, might have spared everyone by prolonging the negotiations a few months — to the point when starting the conference with a goal of it being completed in less than a year would have been obviously ridiculous, rather than just allegedly absurd.

But Cioloş was ultimately too personally invested to let go. After all, it was he who declared in July 2020: “Let us use the opportunity of the Conference on the Future of Europe to redefine governance, prioritize the interests of our European citizens and try to bring the magic back to this European project.”

No doubt after Wednesday’s signing ceremony, EU citizens are beginning to feel the magic.

Never mind that the usher who opened the proceedings should have shouted “I presidenti!” (plural) rather than “Il presidente!” (singular), Sassoli delivered a speech declaring it to be a “special day for European democracy.”

“We need to start this construction,” Sassoli said, as if the bulldozers might arrive at any moment. “And in this process we want to put citizens and civil society at the center, but also national parliaments, regions, local actors,, social partners, academia, young people. This conference aims to be a new forum for debate in which young Europeans will have a special place, as they are the first to be affected by the future of the European project.”

“By putting European citizens at the center of this process, by consulting them, by involving them in the debates throughout the conference, they will have the opportunity to address the issues that are dear to them, and we are committed to listening to their expectations, their concerns, their ideas,” Sassoli continued. “That’s why the conference will be an innovative event, and that’s why it can be a game-changer.”

To grasp the full cataclysmic craziness of the proposition requires only substituting Italian, Estonian, Danish or any other EU nationality for “European” in Sassoli’s remarks. For example: “By putting French citizens at the center of this process, by consulting them, by involving them in debates,” Brussels will prove that it does not normally listen to its citizens’ expectations or concerns or ideas, and that it needs a “game-changer” in order to be relevant in regular people’s lives.

First fight

Of course, the three presidents did not actually name the members of the new executive board or the supporting secretariat. And no sooner had the signing ceremony finished than a new fight broke out over a lack of women nominees for the board. Presumably that will all be worked out before the conference formally begins on May 9.

But at the ceremony, the three presidents did congratulate themselves several times on breaking the deadlock that their own institutions had created.

Costa, perhaps, might have listened more carefully to his own speech to recognize that EU citizens have more pressing things on their minds than the bureaucratic churnings of Brussels.

“Starting the Conference on the Future of Europe is a sign of hope for the future that we want for all of Europe,” Costa said. “We have confidence that we will overcome the pandemic, that we will escape from this crisis. We hope that together we will be able to build a Europe for the future.”

Diplomats and officials who are paid to take the EU’s inner workings with utmost seriousness said that some introspection was crucially needed among the 27 member countries and the three main institutions — perhaps most importantly when it comes to the EU’s decision-making process.

In that sense, a year-long effort to reach a deal on the conference was emblematic of the problems that theoretically it is designed to solve. Sanctions on Belarus over the fraudulent election in August took three months to approve. A fight over a rule-of-law provision attached to the EU’s new long-term budget took more than six months to resolve. Indeed, streamlined decision-making could only help.

But the same serious-thinking folks noted that many national capitals haven’t bought into the idea and, according to one diplomat, “are not taking the conference very seriously.”

Another diplomat said that even with investment, the conference would not have enough time to accomplish anything significant. Macron had envisioned discussions on transnational candidate lists for European elections and an overhaul of the so-called lead candidate or Spitzenkandidat process for choosing the Commission president. None of that seems possible in just over a year, and with pandemic conditions persisting for the foreseeable future.

“I understand the French push but time is clearly too short if we want to achieve ambitious results,” a second EU diplomat said. “Probably that’s exactly the point, many are not eager to see ambitious outcomes.”

In response to Macron’s initial idea, many EU leaders had warned that getting tangled up in potential changes to the EU treaties would be a bad idea, and that was before the pandemic hit and crippled large swaths of the economy.

Indeed, in a sign of how the conference will be over almost before it starts, consider that Sassoli’s term will end in December 2021, before the conference reaches its conclusions. Council President Charles Michel’s first mandate will end in May, around the same time that the Conference is due to wrap up. By then, Costa will have passed the rotating Council presidency to Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, who will have passed it to Macron. The way the calendar works out, Janša, who has developed a reputation for provocative social media posts, will be in charge of the rotating presidency for much of the time the conference is underway.

In her own speech on Wednesday, von der Leyen, who some observers view as the EU’s main president, said she hoped the conference would reach the silent majority, not allowing for the possibility that the majority would prefer silence to virtual town hall meetings.

“Let me be very clear,” von der Leyen said. “This Conference on the Future of Europe is not just another conference for what some call the Brussels Bubble. This conference has to go beyond Brussels, has to go beyond national capitals, because for this conference to succeed, we want to reach what some call the silent majority. We want to hear from European citizens in their full diversity, from young and old, city dwellers and rural residents, from Erasmus students to those who took to the streets in the Pulse of Europe demonstrations as well as those who have their doubts if creating an ever-closer union is the right road to take.”

As for those who have doubts that a Conference on the Future of Europe is the right road to take, there are at least 11 presidents to complain to, and some of them might actually be in charge.

Jacopo Barigazzi and Maïa de La Baume contributed reporting.