Who is Herman Van Rompuy?

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in FT on Tue 23rd Feb 2010

With Europe's economic and monetary union in a spin, it is a good time to ask what the new Lisbon treaty can do to help. In institutional terms, the most relevant innovation is the creation of the post of standing presidency of the European Council and the appointment to it of Herman van Rompuy.

In contrast to its detailed specification of Catherine Ashton's job as foreign minister, the treaty is relatively vague about the role of the president of the European Council. Mr Van Rompuy, who has no vote, is to chair the institution and "drive forward its work". He will "ensure the preparation and continuity" of its work, and "endeavour to facilitate cohesion and consensus". In the field of foreign and security policy, he is to "ensure the external representation" of the EU "at his level and in that capacity". Clearly, much of the detail was left, and was intended to be left by the drafters of the treaty, to be filled out by the first post-holder.

So who is Herman van Rompuy and what has he been up to so far? As a former Belgian prime minister he is perforce a federalist. He is a Flemish social Christian, aged 62, of modest demeanour. Born in Etterbeek, Brussels, he has degrees from Leuven Catholic University in philosophy and applied economics; he has a wife and four children. As speaker of the lower house of the Belgian parliament and then prime minister, Mr Van Rompuy brought welcome stability. He is known to be very diplomatic and a master of compromise.

Of his new job, he says: "I will consider everyone's interests and sensitivities. Even if our unity is our strength, our diversity remains our wealth. Every country should emerge victorious from negotiations. A negotiation that ends with a defeated party is never a good negotiation". Mr Van Rompuy will not be the first Belgian to deploy the art of compromise on behalf of the European Union - although one recalls the remark of another former Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, that a true Belgian compromise is a compromise which nobody can understand.

Less than two months into the job, Mr Van Rompuy has already confounded those who said he would be weak. He has crisscrossed the EU, meeting each head of government. In a number of carefully calibrated public statements, the president of the European Council has spelled out how he plans to develop the role. It is clear he does not intend to be a mere non-executive chairman of the board. Nor will he confine himself to foreign policy.

Instead, he initiated the informal European Council at the Bibliothèque Solvay, a 19th-century Brussels library, to tackle the economic crisis and the risk of a Greek default. Mr Van Rompuy advanced a seven point plan designed to deliver economic recovery. Here he trod boldly and directly into the sphere of economic policymaking which the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, might once have considered as his own preserve.

Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso are polite about each other but not effusive. There is no Blairite familiarity between them. How their relationship pans out will be the major factor in determining whether or not the experiment of a permanent presidency of the European Council is a success. They will be seeing a lot of each other. AIready they breakfast every week. Their pairing will be under particular scrutiny on their foreign travels, and especially at the next G20 summit in June in Toronto, where Mr Van Rompuy looks determined to be prominent.

Mr Van Rompuy seeks to demarcate his work as follows: whereas the Commission president will be responsible for proposing the content of the Europe 2020 strategy for sustainable growth and jobs, he will be in charge of 'governance' issues. In other words, faithful to his brief of driving forward the work of the European Council, Mr Van Rompuy wants to shift the focus from what has to be done to how on earth to do it. "In the past," he says, "there has been a lack of ownership, of monitoring, and of enforcement. There has also been a lack of focus. That must change."

Under the Van Rompuy doctrine, the European Council can give guidance to the Commission and Council of Ministers, but it remains itself ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the strategy. It will assess the performance of national economic policies as well as looking at the scope for concrete, quantifiable measures at the EU level.

In seeking to get individual heads of government to take collective responsibility for the decisions of the European Council, Mr Van Rompuy is dead on target. The Lisbon treaty turns the European Council into an EU institution like any other. As such it must learn to abide by the rules of the game and the general principles of EU law. It must practice sincere co-operation with the classic trio of Commission, parliament and Council of Ministers. Expressly forbidden by the treaty from playing a legislative role, the European Council has got to get down to the job of providing consensual political leadership.

Mr Van Rompuy has ambitions for his new baby. He astounded his colleagues on February 11 by proposing that from now on they meet each month. This upgrading of activity will quickly turn the European Council into acting, and feeling, like Europe's cabinet government. Such a transformation would benefit a situation in which the EU played a part in running the Greek economy and where, in the foreign field, there are continually urgent issues of international security to be addressed at the EU level. The increased regularity of meetings at the top level will be especially welcome to the member states of the eurozone. It will be interesting to note how soon absenteeism creeps into the behaviour of certain prime ministers of nationalist bent from countries yet to adopt the single currency.

The European parliament watches these developments with some amazement. Mr Van Rompuy is obliged to report to the parliament after the four formal annual meetings of the European Council as prescribed by the treaty. (His first appearance will be in April.) But he has said bluntly that he is not accountable to the parliament, and he has declined, with a disarming touch of arrogance, to answer written parliamentary questions from individual MEPs. No enhanced role is foreseen for the president of the parliament at meetings of the European Council.

Yet most really hangs on how Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso learn to get on. Get on they must if the Lisbon arrangements are to work. If they do not, we can already be fairly certain that in 2014 the successor to Herman van Rompuy as president of the European Council will be one and the same person who succeeds José Manuel Barroso as president of the European Commission.