The joys and the heartaches of European Council meetings
Para quem estiver interessado em saber como é que os nossos grandes
lideres negoceiam os acordos europeus (ou pelo menos como o faziam no início do século), não há melhor introdução do que o
seguinte artigo do Economist. Aqui vai um aperitivo para aguçar a curiosidade:
«Only rarely can officials sneak into the room to
advise their leaders. (…) Not all the leaders' requests are for advice.
“If Chirac's light goes on”, says one official, “it usually just means
that he wants another beer.” The French president's habit of drinking
beer throughout summits may account for the entertaining nature of his
post-summit press conferences. The only other regular drinker is
Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who always has a glass of brandy
before him (Germany's Helmut Kohl preferred a plate of food). Mr Juncker
is also a heavy smoker. Although the conference room is festooned with
no-smoking signs, all the leaders are thoughtfully provided with an
ashtray, which tells you something about European attitudes to
regulations.»
Dec 11th 2003
From The Economist print edition
The joys and the heartaches of European Council meetings
“WE
CANNOT do business like this in the future,” was the verdict of an
exhausted and exasperated Tony Blair after the European Union's marathon
summit in Nice in December 2000. Tough luck, Tony. All the signs are
that this weekend's summit in Brussels will be just like Nice—and maybe
even worse. Once again, European leaders will haggle through all-night
sessions over a vastly complicated legal text. Once again, the toughest
issue is the one that almost proved a deal-breaker at Nice: the voting
weights of EU governments in the Council of Ministers. The Brussels
summit could even prove more fraught than Nice, because there are 25
countries at the table, not 15.
Most EU summits nowadays are
routine affairs that last just a day and a half. But when political
leaders get together to negotiate a new treaty (as they seem to have
done with increasing frequency over the past decade or so), things can
rapidly spiral out of control. These summits are what officials call,
with a mixture of dread and relish, “five-shirters”. They drag on for
days longer than scheduled and usually finish in the small hours of the
morning. European leaders often emerge blinking and unsure about
precisely what they have agreed to.
Things were meant to be
different this time. The draft constitution on the table this weekend
was produced by an 18-month-long Convention on the Future of Europe,
chaired by a former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In
theory, the convention was supposed to have produced a document so
perfectly balanced that the assembled leaders could happily sign up to
it over a cup of coffee. Some hope. The issues involved are far too
controversial to be settled so easily. The only way to make sure that
leaders reach an agreement, insist experienced Eurocrats, is the
traditional one: call a summit, impose a deadline and force them to keep
talking. A tactic much loved by the KGB, sleep deprivation, can be
surprisingly effective. The longer and more exhausting the negotiations,
the more that politicians around the table are inclined to compromise.
The
pressure on European leaders is greater because they have to do the
most delicate negotiating without the help of national officials. The
only people allowed into the room in Brussels will be heads of
government and foreign ministers, plus a few EU officials. “It's like an
exam,” says one diplomat. “The leaders have to cram all the details
into their heads ahead of time and hope they get it right on the night.”
All the politicians carry fat briefing books, but they rarely have time
to find the right page. Every 20 minutes or so, a note-taker leaves the
conference chamber and goes next door to a room in which each country
has a solitary official. The note-taker tells these national diplomats
(known in EU jargon as Anticis) what has just been said. They scribble
down a text and fax it through to their delegations, where assorted
ambassadors pore over the transcripts, hoping desperately that their
prime minister or president has not inadvertently given away the crown
jewels. Even if he has, it will usually be too late for officials to
jump in. By the time they have seen the transcripts, the debate has
moved on.
Only rarely can officials sneak into the room to
advise their leaders. If one of the politicians in the negotiating
chamber feels in urgent need of advice, he can press a panic button. At
that point a light goes on in the Anticis' room, and an official,
assuming a grave “my country needs me” face, rushes in. National civil
servants are meant to offer advice and then leave. But this rule has
been bent in extremis. At the Maastricht summit in 1991, Britain's Sir
John Kerr hid under the table and continued to pass notes to John Major,
his prime minister.
Not all the leaders' requests are for
advice. “If Chirac's light goes on”, says one official, “it usually just
means that he wants another beer.” The French president's habit of
drinking beer throughout summits may account for the entertaining nature
of his post-summit press conferences. The only other regular drinker is
Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who always has a glass of brandy
before him (Germany's Helmut Kohl preferred a plate of food). Mr Juncker
is also a heavy smoker. Although the conference room is festooned with
no-smoking signs, all the leaders are thoughtfully provided with an
ashtray, which tells you something about European attitudes to
regulations.
Betting on Berlusconi
The few senior officials
who manage to stay in the room throughout the negotiations are those
working for the EU's central bureaucracy. They will do a lot to advise
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, who has the unenviable
task of chairing the meeting. Three French officials working for the
council—Pierre de Boissieu, Max Keller and Jean-Claude Piris—will play a
vital role in dreaming up and testing any possible compromises. But in
the end much of the success or failure of the summit will rest on the
shoulders of Mr Berlusconi himself.
As a billionaire businessmen,
he should, in theory, have the combination of charm and command of
detail required to wrap up a complex negotiation. But Mr Berlusconi has
been ill in recent weeks with a prolonged bout of gastro-enteritis. Even
when he is on top form his performances at European summits have been
erratic. He specialises in dirty jokes and dark warnings about the
dangers of communism. His relations with Romano Prodi, an Italian
political rival who, as European Commission president, will also be in
the chamber, albeit largely as a bystander, are notoriously fractious.
Those
looking for flexibility from the Poles see it as ominously symbolic
that Leszek Miller, the Polish prime minister, plans to attend the
summit in a full-body plaster cast, after a helicopter accident.
Brussels officials who have lived through many crisis summits remain
confident that a deal will be struck in the end—it always is. But in the
new enlarged EU, the traditional way of doing business could yet go
awry.
Isto é tão bom, obrigada! :D
ResponderEliminarMuito obrigado Mariana. É um dos meus artigos favoritos do The Economist. Li-o na edição impressa, há muitos anos, e achei que valia a pena copiá-lo para aqui ;)
Eliminar