The EU’s New Team

It’s not quite a done deal yet, but it increasingly looks like the new European Union leadership team will be Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as EU President with foreign policy run by Catherine Ashton, Baroness of Upholland and current EU Trade Commissioner.

Most of the attention has centered on the “president” job because it sounds more important and because Tony Blair was in the running. Ultimately, however, a center-right politician from a small country fits the political situation better. That’s why I thought it would go to the Dutch Prime Minister, but it went to the Belgian one instead. This seems like a bit of an odd choice since Van Rompuy leaving the job may set off a French-Flemish political crisis in Belgium, but so it goes.

That said, it’s always been not-totally-clear what the president’s job is. The foreign policy chief, by contrast, is going to have a real budget and personnel and such. And while Baroness Ashton is incredibly obscure in the United States, Trade Commissioner is one of the most important jobs in the European Union. The EU is a funny kind of entity, such that lots of its jobs don’t matter, but EU monetary policy (and hence the ECB president) and EU trade policy (and hence the EU Trade Commissioner) matter a lot. Other key Ashton facts:

— As best I can tell “Baroness” is like the lady equivalent of being “sir,” she didn’t inherit her title.

— She’s been a Baroness since 1999.

— She held a few different junior minister positions in the Education and Justice ministries.

— She’s been an EU commissioner for about a year.

— Upholland is a town in Lancashire.

The vast majority of people find the details of the European integration process to be deadly dull, but I think it’s interesting and I promise you that when people look back from a hundred years int eh future this process is going to be considered important. Is it a super-state? An international organization? Nobody knows!