EU's first 100 days under Lisbon treaty get mixed report

(BRUSSELS) - A hundred days after the EU's reforming Lisbon Treaty went into effect, creating a president and a foreign affairs chief, teething troubles persist with scant sign of a common European voice.

The treaty, which had a long and painful gestation before coming into force on December 1, was designed to streamline a bloc which has expanded far into the former Soviet fiefdom in the last decade.

It is also aimed at helping Europe speak with a stronger, more unified voice on the international stage amid fears of a G2 world dominated by the United States and China.

For some it was over-advertised as some kind of institutional holy grail.

"The Lisbon treaty has been sold and oversold as the solution to Europe's institutional problems. But it hasn't changed the political realities of Europe," argues Hugo Brady, Senior Research Fellow at the London-based Centre for European Reform.

Nor has it changed the nature of politicians and bureaucrats as the hundred-day milestone approaches on Wednesday.

"It's a natural tendency for bureaucrats to fight against each other, at any level of bureaucracy. But it's a Darwinian struggle, and it will be no harm if a clear hierarchy comes out of it," Brady told AFP.

Among the main players in Europe's institutional evolution are EU Council president Herman Van Rompuy, a former Belgian PM who was recently described by British eurosceptic MEP Nigel Farage as "a damp rag", although also as a "quiet assassin."

Then there's British peer Catherine Ashton, anointed to the similarly unelected post of EU High Representative for foreign and security affairs.

Jean-Dominique Giuliani, head of the Robert Schuman Foundation think tank, sees the choice of two largely unknown figures as a way for national leaders "to keep a firm grip on foreign affairs".

Added to the mix are Jose Manuel Barroso, who has started a second five-year term as head of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, and the EU parliament, the only elected European body which has had its powers enhanced under the treaty.

To top it all there is still a six-monthly rotating EU presidency, currently held by Spain, and the little matter of 27 national governments.

There is little sign that Brussels is answering Henry Kissinger's famous question: "Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?"

"I think it's taking some time to work through exactly how various high-level meetings will happen," US assistant secretary of state Philip Crowley complained recently.

The institutional conundrum explains partly Obama's decision to scrap a US-EU summit scheduled for Madrid in May.

Michael Emerson, at the Centre for European Policy Studies, has one way of thinning out Europe's institutional gene pool.

"I'm rather concerned that the rotating presidency is not more dead and buried," he told AFP, accusing the Spanish of "puffing themselves up" instead of accepting the lesser role which the Lisbon treaty prescribes.

For many observers Van Rompuy has played a smarter game, keeping a low profile while foreign affairs chief Ashton has waded in and collected the brickbats.

"In his quiet way," Van Rompuy "is coming through quite positively," Emerson said.

However, Ashton, who has never held elected office, has had a tough time ever since members of the European parliament last year said that she was too inexperienced for the job.

She was also slammed roundly for not rushing to Haiti after a devastating earthquake on January 12 and has received more flak over key appointments to the major new External Action Service secretariat she has to set up.

While many had hoped that the Lisbon Treaty would end 10 years of institutional navel-gazing in Europe there are already mutterings of more treaty changes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday warned that "the treaties must be changed" if there is to be an IMF-style European monetary fund, an idea floated to avoid a repetition of the kind of debt crisis Greece is enduring.

Treaty of Lisbon - Official Journal