PARIS — “Why not the best?”
That’s the guiding principle European Union politicians should abide by as they choose the leaders of the bloc’s most important institutions for the next five years.
No one is better qualified to lead the European Council, chairing the group’s summits, than Angela Merkel. The veteran German chancellor, nearing the end of her fourth and final term at home, has the strength and stamina needed to go head-to-head with U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the global stage, and the patience and perseverance to craft the compromises needed to keep the EU moving forward together.
Steeled by her formative years under communist rule in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Merkel embodies both the unification of post-Cold War Europe and the centrist EU consensus around the social market economy, liberal values and human decency.
Her steady-handed leadership would be a powerful antidote to the nationalists and xenophobes who want to wrench Europe — and much of the rest of the world — in dangerous directions. Imagine the faces of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Matteo Salvini, Italy’s wannabe strongman.
No other serving European leader carries Merkel’s moral authority, exemplified most recently by her Harvard commencement address. “Our individual liberties are not givens. Democracy is not something we can take for granted. Neither is peace, and neither is prosperity,” she said in the speech last month on U.S. soil. “But if we break down the walls that hem us in, if we step out into the open and have the courage to embrace new beginnings, everything is possible.”
Her appointment would raise Europe’s profile and capitalize on her 14 years of experience of European and global summitry without bringing an outsized ego to the role.
Merkel has repeatedly said both in public and private that she doesn’t want either of the top EU jobs — and she may well be sincere. She turns 65 in July. Perhaps she truly wants to retire to her dacha in the lake district north of Berlin sometime in the next two years, dig her garden and write her memoirs.
But outgoing European Council President Donald Tusk, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and her fellow leaders should appeal to her to put her widely respected skills at the service of Europe. The Council president contract has a bailout clause. She can leave after two and a half years if she’s had enough.
Appointing the experienced center-right Christian Democratic politician would finally give Germany a top European post for the first time since Walter Hallstein headed the first European Commission from 1958 to 1967.
Merkel is eminently better qualified than the German contender for the Commission presidency, Manfred Weber. The conservative MEP has no executive experience and was miscast as the center-right European People’s Party lead candidate in the European Parliament election, losing voter share even in his native Bavaria.
Unlike Weber, Merkel is not tarnished by a long bromance with Orbán — the champion of “illiberal democracy” and “Christian Europe” — nor with Austria’s discredited experiment in bringing the pro-Russian far-right into a coalition government.
Furthermore, Merkel has little to expect from her lame-duck chancellorship, except more regional election losses and a slow ebbing of her authority. Her grand coalition with the divided and leaderless center-left Social Democrats is eking out what looks like its final months.
If Merkel wants to give her chosen successor, CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a chance to form a government before the next election, she would do best to move on this year.
Of course, there are some arguments against a Merkel presidency, and not just from those who wrongheadedly fear it would cement German dominance. She has shown distressingly little interest in strengthening European defense — one of the EU’s major priorities of the next five years. The German armed forces are rusting away due to bipartisan neglect.
Nor has she done anything to tame Germany’s runaway current account surplus, one of the root causes of economic imbalances in the eurozone. And she has stuck doggedly to the schwarze Null (black zero) balanced budget rule despite pleas from the IMF, the OECD and the Commission to increase public investment in lagging road, rail and telecoms infrastructure.
Drafting the Gipfelkönigin (queen of summits) for the European Council would open up the other top EU jobs for a politically balanced dream team of able contenders.
The Commission is first and foremost the pilot and regulator of the European economy. So it makes sense to have a president who “gets it” about the new economy of startups and unicorns, geeks and venture capitalists, innovators and disrupters, green growth and carbon neutrality, tax shelters and transfer pricing.
Many European leaders still think too much in 20th century notions of industrial giants. Their political reflex is to protect old jobs rather than create the conditions for new ones.
That makes Margrethe Vestager — the 51-year-old Danish social liberal who has been at the helm of competition policy for five years and has done battle with the Google, Apple and Facebook and the national governments that gave them sweetheart tax deals — well equipped to lead the EU executive.
Some Brussels insiders argue that the Commission president must come from a country that is a member of the eurozone and fully part of EU defense and police cooperation. But the best way to coax reticent Danes into accepting the full menu of European integration might well be to have an articulate countrywoman in the top EU job.
Dutch Socialist Spitzenkandidat Frans Timmermans, 58, would bring expertise and multilingual powers of persuasion to the role of foreign policy chief, where the biggest challenge is arguably to convince the bigger member states to work through the EU and its External Action Service rather than seeking national advantage at the expense of the whole.
That would clear the way for a German-speaking Frenchman, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, 60, to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank, rather than the German contender, Jens Weidmann, who opposed all the decisions that saved the euro during the crisis and takes a more hawkish, restrictive view of monetary policy.
Some will object that this dream team of Europe’s best and brightest omits candidates from central and southern Europe, and hence lacks the necessary geographical balance. Others will say it ignores the realities of the backroom power struggles in Brussels, and the muscle-flexing of the European Parliament, which would deliver some more sub-optimal leadership.
Yet Central European leaders have failed to coalesce around a single nominee for any of the top positions. Dalia Grybauskaité, 63, the former Lithuanian president and a former commissioner, would certainly be a strong contender, but she is not a member of any of the EU’s political families and she may be too outspoken and critical of Russia for some leaders.
As for the south, there are other key positions in play such as the key economic portfolios in the Commission and the presidency of the European Parliament. (And as for the parliamentary power brokers, we should all hope they neutralize each other.)
A Merkel-Vestager-Timmermans-Villeroy de Galhau ticket would give Europe the best available leadership “in a world of brutes,” to quote Enrico Letta, the former Italian prime minister. We will need it.
Paul Taylor, contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the Europe At Large column.
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