Fianna Fáil sees top European jobs as gifts for party faithful

IRELAND twice lost the opportunity to have an Irish person as head of the European Commission, and once again the Government is reluctant to campaign for a citizen for high position.

The problem is that none of the candidates were party members. You may subscribe to the idea that this is fair enough – after all, if Fianna Fáil put in someone from another party as European commissioner now, it could be 10 years before they get to nominate one of their own should they lose the next general election. But it begs the question of whether these jobs are simply gifts for the party faithful.

Now former Fine Gael taoiseach John Bruton has put himself forward for the job of EU president, but the Government does not really want to know. They were told three weeks ago but kept mum about it. Perhaps this was to protect him from the fate of early starters. Or, as the Taoiseach’s comments suggested, the Government wants to back winners – something at variance with his support of Tony Blair whose bid has sunk like a stone.

Mr Cowen said he would wait to see if Mr Bruton’s name survived the initial exploratory process and, if it did, he would support him. It was left to Foreign Minister Micheál Martin to say if there was an Irish man in the running they would be supportive.

Last week Mr Bruton personally put his name on the table for the job of EU president. He acknowledged that his prospects would be limited to there being no serving prime minister around the EU table willing or acceptable for the post.

He served on the EU Council when taoiseach and hosted them during Ireland’s EU presidency. He was on the powerful steering committee that drew up the Constitution on which the Lisbon Treaty is based and he has been a vice president of the powerful European People’s Group, so he knows the score.

Having good people to represent Ireland in the EU is vital since with less than 1% of the population the country certainly cannot get its way through muscle.

Unfortunately, there is no acknowledgement of this, and rather than opening up Ireland’s EU jobs to competition and transparency, politicians see them as personal gifts. They justify this by saying the Irish electorate has no interest in the EU and its positions as though that is the only criteria for leadership.

However, the soldiers of destiny may have taken a step on the road to EU-wide policy now that they are a member of the Liberal group, the EU’s third largest political family. As a result the Taoiseach has a group to meet with prior to summits like all the other EU members leaders.

These groups are becoming increasingly important – consider that the EPP has the leaders of 11 EU countries, including France and Germany, together with the presidents of the commission and parliament, among their members.

The Socialists come second and the Liberals third, boasting Mr Cowen and the Finnish prime minister among their members.

Mr Cowen was happy to say he would support Liberal candidates for the top jobs in line with the group’s policy. This would have been music to the ears of Pat Cox and to EP Liberal group leader and former Belgium PM, Guy Verhofstadt, five years ago when both men wanted the job of commission president.

However Bertie Ahern had already promised Ireland’s commission job to his finance minister who was not in the running for the president and so scuppering Mr Cox’s chances – and he dumped Mr Verhofstadt in favour of Tony Blair’s fellow Iraq war supporter, Jose Manuel Barroso.

Little wonder that Mr Verhofstadt allowed himself a wry smile as Mr Cowen was being quizzed during the Liberal party press conference about his lack of support for John Bruton.