People seem to have two rather different ideas about a Blair Presidency of Europe. Either (like David Miliband) that we should have him because on landing in Washington, Beijing or Moscow he could stop the traffic, or (like George Monbiot) we should have him because he’s bound in the course of his duties to have to go to countries where he could be arrested and put on trial for war crimes over Iraq. And then again, there are some – probably a majority in the EU – who don’t want him at any price. But in all the backstairs lobbying and grubby deal-making now going on across the diplomatic capitals of Europe, there is another issue that sticks out: why can’t the people of Europe choose their own president by a vote?

The rules under Article 9B of the Lisbon Treaty are that the president should be elected by the European Council which consists of the 27 Heads of State in the EU. The method of election is by qualified majority, i.e. each State has a number of votes roughly proportionate to its population. The president is thus elected for a term of 2.5 years which can be renewed for one further 2.5 years. His role is defined in the Treaty only in generalities and is likely to depend largely on the personality of the occupant.
There are formidable grounds for rejecting the Blair candidacy. He deliberately took Britain to war in Iraq in violation of international law (since no UN Security Council resolution authorising it was ever obtained). In his trans-Atlanticism he could be seen, and see his own role, as over-partial towards the Americans, a sort of US Trojan horse in Europe. He is strongly opposed by the smaller EU States which see his grandiose style of international glamour as marginalising them. And not least, there is resistance to appointing someone as the first president of Europe who comes from a country that is far and away the most hostile to the EU.
What is missing from this calculative horse-trading behind closed doors is the people’s voice. There is already a huge democratic deficit in the EU, and this election confined to a college of 27 people only serves flagrantly to point up what a stitch-up the governance of Europe is. It is too late to change the method of election this time round (though certainly not too late for organisations to lobby hard for a European cause in place of personal aggrandizement), but this should be the last fling of the ancien regime.

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