Putting meat on the bones of Lisbon treaty

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If anyone thinks that the decision by the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, to finally agree to sign the Lisbon Treaty was the end of the EU's institutional maze, they are sorely mistaken.

It is true that the biggest hurdle is over.

But the array of institutional questions thrown at the Minister for Europe, Chris Bryant, by the House of Lords EU select committee, suggests that putting the meat on the bones of the Lisbon Treaty is an equally delicate, uncertain and controversial affair.

To begin with, the Lisbon Treaty gives away very little about the role of the new President of the European Council. As a result, whoever first occupies this position will have a big say in what the job entails.

Officially, Lisbon says that the President is to provide cohesion and consensus to the Council, a role arguably suited to a quiet effective diplomatic figure, like Jean-Claude Juncker.

Others, including the UK, argue that getting cohesion across 27 member states demands leadership.

As a result, unless a 'big hitter' fills the post, the EU will have missed out on a golden opportunity to achieve one of Lisbon's core objectives: to make Europe a main player on the world stage again. Few could deny that the UK's official candidate for the post, Tony Blair, would be a high profile catch.

But his refusal as prime minister to join the Schengen Area or the Euro, and his divisive Iraq war legacy has apparently pushed him down the betting.

On the other hand, as Chris Bryant said, Blair's consistent and passionate pro-enlargement approach when in office means that he could be a real consensus builder between new and old member states.

What seemed to alarm the EU committee was that for such a decisive position on the European President, the UK seems to have no position at all on who should be the new High Representative.

We know that David Miliband has ruled himself out for the job, but Bryant confirmed that the UK has no officially preferred candidate, either from the UK or from any other EU member state.

What is so striking is that this post is arguably far more important than the Presidency since it is the crucial pivot and coordinator for the EU's various foreign policy actors and institutions: the high level diplomatic, security and defence work of the Council; the development aid, trade and external contractual relationships managed by the Commission, and the growing budgetary and scrutinising role of the European Parliament.
On top of this, the High Representative has two other mind-bogglingly complicated challenges to deal with.

First, he has two come up with a plan for how the new European External Action Service (EEAS) – a substantial new EU diplomatic corps - will work.

In particular, he will have to deal with the veritable minefield over how many and what proportion of EEAS personnel come from member states, the Council and the Commission, as well as exactly where the EEAS will sit in relation to the EU institutions.

Secondly, the High Representative will have to deal with the inevitable demands from National Parliamentarians to have a scrutinising and oversight role over his and the EEAS' work.

The fear is that this could lead to the High Representative doing so much accountability work, touring around the 27 member states foreign affairs committees,that he has very little time to represent anything much at all.

One possible solution voiced by the House of Lords Committee was to utilise the so called 'Conference of Chairmen of Foreign Affairs Committees' that brings together representatives from foreign affairs committees across the member states and the European Parliament.

It seems that in the desperate struggle to get the Treaty through, the EU, and by that I mean member states as well as EU institutions, have arguably taken their collective eye off the ball as to how it will actually work in practice.

There is definitely a sense that the EU is fumbling around in the dark for answers to the questions thrown up by a loosely worded, now ratified, Lisbon Treaty.

Edward Webber is parliamentary researcher to Jenny Willott MP.