Despite declarations by euro-politicians on Russian policy in Ukraine, the fact is that members of the incoming European Parliament will have just one genuine lever to affect EU foreign policy: they will be able to block the nomination of the new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.The High Representative is the top eurocrat whom the Brussels elite -- always keen to give the European Union the appearance of a sovereign state – encourage the public to call “the EU foreign minister.”
The High Representative is the head of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council – the council of the foreign ministers of the member states – and also participates in the European Council, the council of heads of state and government, from which national foreign ministers are excluded. The job also includes a seat as vice-president of the European Commission, the unelected “government” or executive of the EU.
The post of High Representative was created to take foreign policy one step further away from control by member states. The new Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will have a role in who gets the job as of May 25th.
Catherine Ashton, a British former local government bureaucrat who was pitched into the post of High Representative by a political fluke in 2004, will end her first term later this year.
At the moment, the favourite to replace her is Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister.
However, while MEPs from the Eastern European countries may support Sikorski for the job because he is Polish, some may decide his anti-Russian position is too vigorous: when an “Atlanticist” such as Sikorski joins the Obama administration in calling for sanctions against Russia -- and also calls for moving NATO troops to Poland - Eastern European MEPs start to count the cost to their own economies.
In a taste of what may lie ahead after in the elections, last week in the final session of the outgoing parliament the Socialists and Democrats Group refused to support a non-binding measure denouncing Russian pressure on Eastern European countries.
The S&D group said the resolution might endanger the construction of the “strategic” Russian-backed South Stream Pipeline which is meant to supply natural gas to Bulgaria, Slovenia, Serbia and Italy.
According to the Brussels online journal Euractiv, “the Socialists and Democrats in the parliament favour the ‘dialogue’ approach over confrontation, unlike most of the right.”
By “most of the right,” Euractiv means the centrist Christian Democrats and their allied parties who have been cheering on moves to bring Ukraine closer to an ever-more powerful EU and to confront Russia.
According to the latest polls, the centrist group known as the European People’s Party may take 222 seats in the new 751-seat parliament, while the Socialists and Democrats may take 209.
However, among the politicians who will be leaders of the eurosceptic right in the new parliament, there is little support for confrontation with Russia or for putting Ukraine on the path towards joining the EU.
Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch eurosceptic Freedom Party, which could top the polls at the European Parliament elections in The Netherlands next month, blames the crisis on the EU.
In an interview with Reuters on April 17th, Wilders accused the EU of “inciting” violence by dangling the “carrot” of EU integration.
“Europe is responsible for a lot of the mess here,” Wilders said of Ukraine. “I would not have given them the carrot to give them the hope to wish for European membership. Everyone knows the country is divided.”
“European politicians …went to speak to people in Kiev, half of whom were Fascists standing there, and said ‘We will help you, we will support you.’ …It really didn’t help.”
“I believe Russians should stay in their own territory. Ukraine is a sovereign country. We should try to de-escalate.”
Similarly, Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s eurosceptic UK Independence Party which may push David Cameron’s Conservatives into third place in the elections, has accused the EU of possessing “an absolutely stupid, almost imperial foreign policy, like almost all empires, it wants to expand and expand.”
“I do not want to be part of an EU that has an activist militarist and expansionist foreign policy.” The EU had encouraged Ukraine to “poke the Russian bear with a stick.”
The candidate to be the new High Representative for Foreign Affairs will be chosen by qualified majority vote in the European Council – which means Britain has no veto over a candidate – and must be accepted by the president of the European Commission.
The new parliament will hold confirmation hearings in the autumn on the new European Commission. Because the new High Representative will automatically be a vice-president of the commission, Ashton’s replacement must face questioning and a confirmation vote my MEPs, like the rest of the new commission.
If between now and then Sikorski becomes too identified with what even some French and German politicians see as economically-dangerous sanctions – in other words, if Sikorski looks to MEPs too much a mouthpiece for American foreign policy in Ukraine -- the parliament may ask for his nomination to be withdrawn.
While the parliament cannot force the withdrawal of any single candidate for the commission, MEPs can threaten to use their power to reject the entire commission if the European Council persists with a candidate, including the High Representative, they do not want.
Also, because the top jobs in the EU institutions must be balanced between nationalities and political groups, if Donal Tusk, the Polish prime minister who is popular among the EU elite, gets one of the other jobs such as president of the commission Sikorski will not be offered the job of High Representative.
Instead, a candidate as unlikely as Catherine Ashton may yet elbow his way to a nomination. The lure is enormous: Ashton is a life-long socialist, sucking in €297,500 ($410,800) a year special low-tax basic pay plus untaxed extras that have put multi-millions through her bank account over a five year term.
Yet in the late 1970s and early 1980s Ashton was an official with the anti-American, anti-NATO 'Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament', and a suspected communist sympathiser who was under surveillance by British intelligence services.
Again, the parliament may let through an unlikely nominee as president of the commission, which has led the EU’s expansion in Eastern Europe. José Manuel Barroso, who is finishing his second five year term (and whom Brussels gossip reckoned was longing to be asked to stay for a third, but figured out last year he wasn’t going to be) is a former Maoist communist sucking in €321,200 ($443,500) a year special low-tax basic pay plus fabulous untaxed extras.
Observers have to wonder how – and why – American conservative plain-folks politicians such as Sarah Palin line up with such people and their policies.
In the new parliament, eurosceptic MEPs from at least eight countries are set to agree with the British conservative historian and political scientist John Laughland, director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, a Paris-based think-tank which is financed by private Russian money: “The crisis shows that not everyone wants to join the EU or NATO. Many people in that region find Russia a more attractive option.”
“That is why the Ukraine crisis is not just a crisis for Ukraine, but, more importantly, an existential crisis for the EU. As we know, the EU integration process, like a bicycle, must keep moving forward or it falls over.”
“For a people or its country to choose ‘the other Europe,’ represented by Russia, torpedoes the entire ideology of the EU which, I suppose, one could sum up as ‘wider still and wider shall they glories be.’" Reported by Breitbart 6 hours ago.