With Hungary’s Prime Minister to keep him company British Prime Minister David Cameron found himself in “splendid isolation” at last weekend’s meeting of European leaders which endorsed former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker as their candidate to be the next president of the European Commission. Mr Cameron claims he was making a statement of principle on the profile needed for this position rather than comments on Mr Juncker’s own fitness for this top job. Behind the scenes, of course, Mr Cameron feels betrayed or at the very least misled by German chancellor Angela Merkel who apparently was reassuring Mr Cameron until a few days before this decision that Juncker was not exactly her preferred candidate either. The British Prime Minister also feels let down by many other of his peers around the European Council table who were not exactly brimming with enthusiasm either for the choice of Mr Juncker.
For the moment the immediate focus of Europe’s leaders is to agree on figures to fill other key places in the Brussels EU top hierarchy, notably a new president of the European Council to replace former Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy and the new EU foreign security chief to replace Cathy Ashton both of whom are coming to the end of their five year terms. Some gesture may be made to Mr Cameron by choosing someone favored by the UK at least as the next Mr Van Rompuy but do not necessarily bet on that. Arguably that post is more key to the UK than the president of the European Commission as far as any possible renegotiation of British membership terms is concerned.
But the drama continues at least for a while: Mr Juncker has also to be endorsed by the European Parliament by a secret vote due to take place on 16 July. Having essentially engineered this situation, it is in the Parliament’s interest to give an overwhelming mandate to Mr Juncker – and at least the absolute majority of the full membership of the assembly required by the rule book – and this is still the most likely outcome but a secret vote is, after all, secret…