Heads of State and of Government in the framework of the European Union: business as usual?

Juan FERNNDEZ OCHOA

Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union (Lisbon) clearly states that the European Council is a component of the institutional order of the EU. However, this institutionalisation process that started in 1974 (informally in 1961) diverges from the original spirit of the European integration process. As a matter of fact, the Schuman declaration almost expressly excludes the possibility of direct intervention by the Member States high representatives. The High Authority, in charge of managing the scheme, was to be composed of independent persons and its legitimacy, it is inferred, was to be taken from their appointment by the governments, giving equal representation. This apparent cession of the steering wheel of the integration project was not a seless act. As Hobbes bluntly put it, the State is self-seeking and competitive. Thus, even if the High Authority evolved into the European Commission retaining the executive power (at least formally), the institutional arrangements at the core of the European construction were set up to avoid unwanted supranational drifts. For this reason, according to Giandomenico Majone, the Community Method emerging from the Treaty of Rome is akin to a mixed government. In it, institutions represent not different branches of power but the main interests concerned: national governments represented in the Council, the supranational institutions-Commission and European Court of Justice, and the peoples of the States brought together in the Community represented, at least in theory, by the EP (Majone, 2005) Nevertheless, we are nowadays all too conscious that the inuence of Member States permeates the European Union in many different ways other than through the Council of the European Union. In October 2010, for example, the French and the German governments proposed a signicant revision of the Treaty of Lisbon in order to improve economic governance. Following a swift process of negotiations, the European Council voted unanimously for the (somewhat diluted) proposition disregarding the reserves of the President of the European Central Bank. Facing this evidence, we cannot but afrm that the European Council, consisting of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States, together with its President and the President of the Commission has become a major decision-making centre in the interplay of EU institutions. Some authors do not fall short of expressing they take the most important decisions (Schoutheete, 2002). Nevertheless, governments also have an inuence in the direction of the EU by IGCs (intergovernmental conferences) or informal negotiation. While all of these forms of inuence seem to appeal to an image of collectiveness, further analysis leads us to a more complex reality. Our study will defend that, while the European Union gives leeway for the deployment of a vast repertoire of practices that allow national leaders to defend particular interests against the prerogatives of the supranational institutions and even other Member States, the institutional order of the European Union frames and conditions the exercise of power by Member States and their representatives in innovative fashion.

I.

Government-guided leadership?
A. The Council as a locus of power[s].
1. Two heads (or more) are better than one: intergovernmental decision-making. The European Council has been construed as the intergovernmental institution par excellence of the European enterprise. Opposed to those institutions composed of community representatives stricto sensu (commissaires, members of the European Parliament, high ofcials)(Fret, 2008), the Heads of State and Government reunited in it have the legitimacy of their democratic election to present themselves as the natural leaders of the European Union (Hayward, 2008). While leadership in the European Union is a hot issue, we can agree to the idea of the Council as a locus of power as De Schoutheete has characterised it (Schoutheete, 2002). Other than its own President and the President and Vice-President of the European Commission, the European Council meets four times per year with the 27 representatives of each Member-State government. Within it, decisions tend to be adopted by consensus, even if votes might occur and will require either a qualied majority or unanimity according to the case. This essentially intergovernmental forum provides strategic guidelines for the development of the EU, serves as the ultimate decisionmaker on issues too complex or contentious for the Council of MInisters to handle, shapes the EUs collective foreign policy, co-ordinates Member State policy on socioeconomic issues, appoints senior ofcials of the EU institutions, initiates and concludes intergovernmental conferences that amend the treaties and effectively decides if and when the EU should welcome new members (Tallberg, 2008). As we can appreciate, decisions taken by the Council are far reaching. The text by Robert Frank illustrates this capacity by studying the particular case of the creation of the European Monetary System. While a series of meetings will rene a consensual proposition during the year 1978, it is the ratication by the European Council reunited in December 1978 that will nally lead to the adoption of the system (Frank, 2006). In matter of months, without the slightest obstacle by the more supranational institutions, a measure changing radically the course of the European integration process was adopted rather smoothly. This capacity of inuence that the Council has did not escape the Academy and has been at the core of the liberal intergovernmentalism of authors such as Moravcsik, who believe it is through governmental agreements that the most important decisions in EU history have been taken, something that would not be able to be explained satisfactorily by the supranationalist alternative according to some authors (Moravcsik, 1995). While these high-level decisions constitute the strongest case for the capacity of inuence that the European Council has, its expressions are diverse in nature. The European Council being the supreme political body in the European Union (Tallberg, 2008), has a say even in apparently superuous aspects of the institutional order of the EU. In this sense, Fret explains how protocol is deeply inuenced by the decisions of the European Council. While it is true that a certain ritualisation has been achieved by ofcials of supranational institutions 1, called Individuals-Memory by the author; in practice, their role is consultative. Protocol is not imposed on the Council, which decides on potential nuances and the concrete application; but, on the contrary, it is subjected to it even if a certain continuity is observed (Fret, 2008). As we have seen, both the texts were analysing and different specialists on the European Council stress the decision-making power exerted by Heads of State and of Government even in opposition to the supranational bodies of the Union. A preliminary conclusion might favour the idea according to the which a political hierarchy is established in such a way that the former precede the latter. Something suggested by Fret as he describes the EU as a weak political order. 2. Bargaining in the European Council: civilised arm-wrestling. Nevertheless, while decisions are taken by consensus within the European Council, and so the results engage a collective responsibility, the process of decision-making involves competition among states. In the following lines we will study how every country tries to exert pressure within this institution to make its own interests prevail.

Particularly, the Press ofce of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union

As we gave explained before, supranational bodies of the EU lack of the political power for independent and far-reaching decision-making. Subjected to the inuence of State actors, the European construction proceeds slowly by political agreement (Hayward, 2008). To reach this kind of understanding is not always simple. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Far from the idea of the Council as a club, it reveals itself to be a locus of rivalry where directly competing and even diverging interests on different issues vie (Wallace, 2002). So, if a decision needs to be made, both the context and negotiations need to be favourable. As a consequence, no country holds a monopoly of decision-making in the European construction. Robert Franks account of VGEs odyssey to promote a European Monetary System is telling in many ways of this power struggle. Since his passage as Ministry of Economy and Finances in the Georges Pompidou government (1969-1974), Valery Giscard dEstaing defends a French voluntarisme that pushes for a monetary union. In the long term, he afrms, such an objective will oblige for the unity of economic policies. However, if some agreements are made towards this objective; the context (crisis, lack of monetary solidarity) and the opposing German position will make impossible for long-lasting agreements to be made before 1978. It is only then, during the Presidency of VGE and the tenure of Raymond Barre at the Ministry of Economy2, that a series of bilateral meetings between the heads of the historical engines of the European Cooperation (Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as a counterpart) manage to condense a satisfying proposition mixing French montarisme and German conomisme. In the following months, intermediary levels of council and decision are bypassed by both protagonists and, nally, the European Council approves the Franco-German reforms. To be able to understand how this entente was able to rally the other 7 Member States behind the proposition we need to understand how bargaining power is exerted by Heads of State and of Government. Tallbergs studies point at two sources that we are going to label traditional as their existence is not directly related to the European framework: State sources of power (and, in particular the aggregate structural power) and Individual sources of power. The rst set of sources relies in what realists believe to be the core of a State power: aggregate resources (territory, population, economic strength, military capabilities, technological development, political stability and administrative capacity)(Tallberg, 2008). These resources are transubstantiated, by mechanisms that are not explicit, into proportional capabilities. Taking this into account, the country that has the highest sum of resources will be able to push for its interests over those who do not measure up through negotiations; which will act as a transmission belt not affecting the nal result. In the case that Robert Frank describes, for example, the Franco-German mutual accord in 1978 could have been formally vetoed by the Benelux countries, Italy Ireland, Denmark or the United Kingdom. However, if we take into consideration what Tallberg describes, the only country capable of putting its veto in practice thanks to its aggregate structural power was the United Kingdom. Frank explains why they did not, as while Great Britain agrees to enter the European Monetary System (...), [it] refuses to join the intervention mechanisms(Frank, 2006). The UK, a big MS, was able to ensure an opt-out for the matters it did not care for while the small MS where (regardless of their choice) quite obliged to accept the proposition. Yet the author discusses a second State source: issue-specic power. This approach, the author recognises, has virtues and shortcomings. On the one hand, it allows us to explain how countries do not wield equal power on all issues and explain how small or medium-sized states (...) punch above their weight;but, on the other hand, identifying these anomalies is hard as the expression of this power overlaps with aggregate structural power (Tallberg, 2008). Once again, in the case of the EMS we could hypothetically afrm that the weight of the GDP of France and Germany gave them an extra source of power to impose their choice in the economic eld. Last, but not least, in Tallbergs thorough analysis appears the importance of the Individual sources of Power. In the contemporary history, we observe a dissociation of the institution and the person representing it, something that has been identied as the institutionalisation of the political function. While formally this is absolutely true (the rationalisation of norms being an expression), we cannot forget that one of the sources of legitimacy of the political power considered by Max Weber was something as personal as charisma (Weber, 1959). To this extent we consider insightful the two sources mentioned by the author: personal authority and expertise. Through these differences, Heads of State and of Government might overcome structural aspects linked to their origins and emerge as reference points in the history of European integration. A concrete example can be appreciated in Jean-Claude Junckers inuential stance within the Union, something that could not be explained by appealing to the structural ressources of Luxembourg but reveals itself to be comprehensible when we take into account that he has
2

Known for his austerity policies that comfort the German Chancellor (Frank, 2006).

served as the Head of Government of this country for already 16 years; making him, by far, the longestserving head of government in the Council(Tallberg, 2008). In the face of what we have seen, we can assert that the European Council is not only a locus of intergovernmental power that erects itself before the most supranational bodies but also a place of intense power struggle. We are still to evaluate if and how the European integration process has changed the exercise of power by the governments of the different Member States.

II.

The supranational framework of the European Union is a game changer in the way State representatives exert power.
From what we have seen, very little suggests major differences in the way State representatives exert power and use their inuences. Some authors defend the idea that regional integration has not reduced the international inuence of the major European states or seriously erode[d] the strength of these states(Ponce, 2000). Indeed, we could assume that regional integration has made the possibility of war less likely, but other than this civilising factor could it be possible to afrm that States relate to each other in a business-as-usual fashion? Fundamentally based on the texts we have studied as a point of departure, we will defend that the Union is a game changer at least in two ways: one the one hand, by changing the institutional order and conditioning power-wielding strategies and; on the other hand, inuencing the work of the Council and decisions taken in it. 1. The European institutional order conditions power-wielding strategies. Almost all specialists agree on the fact that institutions have a constraining power that provide individuals and groups with models of action or behaviour modes (Dulong, 2007). In this light, we can afrm institutions are not neutral and the institutional framework created by the European integration process is no exception. In fact, studies demonstrate it has inuenced the power dynamics amongst Member States and created new contexts for Heads of State and of Government to display that power. Basing his arguments in negotiation theory and institutional theory, Tallberg points at two different institutional factors that condition bargaining power in the European Council. The rst is the veto power; related to the possibility that the European Council has to vote unanimously decisions on delicate issues. In these cases, it is required that all parties give their consent, or at least do not actively block an agreement (Tallberg, 2008). The evident consequence of such a voting method is giving veto power each one of the Member State government representatives. Now, while voting in the European Council is not common and wielding of the veto is a relatively rare occurrence in summit negotiations, its use is very effective (idem). It gives medium and small countries the capacity to renegotiate the issue at stake even if at a considerable political cost. Thus, veto power gives countries with little structural aggregate power a counterbalance to the potential hegemony of more inuential Member States. Yet another institutional instrument of power was available to Member States until the Treaty of Lisbon: chairmanship. Before this major reform, the Presidency of the European Council rotated every semester between Member States. To preside the Council gave the governments of the respective Member States three essential advantages: agenda setting, a privileged situation to access information and the control on procedural aspects of negotiation. According to Tallbergs research, European Council participants agree that agenda preparation is particularly inuential and it can be linked to individual qualities as it might require a tour des capitales to reach compromise agreements. We can infer that Article 15 TEU establishing a stable Presidency elected on the basis of qualied majority voting will have consequences on the power balance within the Council, even if we consider it is still a bit too early to make strong assessments on this matter. Indeed, it is complicated to predict in which direction changes in institutions such as the European Council will lead. To illustrate this, Tallberg proposes focusing on the paradoxical outcome of the EUs enlargement regarding power balance in the Council. While the seemingly logical consequence of an increase of players in the negotiation table is the general reduction of the part of inuence exerted by each existing members, the dominance of the large Member States may instead have been reinforced, as issues that previously were settled in the formal plenary sessions increasingly are resolved in informal and mini-lateral negotiations where the intervening parties have tended to be the EUs large Member States (Tallberg, 2008). The EUs institutional arrangements concerning the European Council have, as weve seen, intervened in the way States exert concrete inuence in the European Council but they have also created a particular symbolic representation of power. Undoubtedly, as Fret describes it, protocol at the EU level is still greatly dependent on the decision of the political body that is the European Council; but, he also shows a

progressive, yet slow, naturalisation of this protocol with its own characteristics. For example, he describes sobriety as an explicit strategy of staging a rationalised political order rather than a theatrical one. The absence of pomp is there to avoid hurting sensibilities but also to give an image of conviviality and understanding amongst leaders (Fret, 2008). These series of codes organising the display of power compels each Head of State or of Government to submit to a regime of self-regulation that, while weak according to the author, has an impact on the generalised perception via strong media attention. 2. The European Union as a priority setter. The European Union is the worlds most advanced and successful international organisation, presiding over a level of legal and economic integration unmatched in global politics (Kleine, 2010). Such a system requires for a high level of implication in terms of time and resources by a Member State and its leaders. And indeed thats what empirical research shows; according to Ponce, European states spend more on regional integration and less on defence as the integration process develops (Ponce, 2000). Moreover, regional cooperation sets a series of priorities that State cannot avoid and makes European issues a matter of domestic interest. As Paul Herault puts it: identifying a purely national character of an interest is more and more difcult, even sometimes illusive (Herault, 2009). To sum it up, the commitment of Member States with a regional cooperation enterprise with unparalleled depth subjects political leaders in the Council to give importance to issues whose impact will exceed the national borders. A clear illustration of such a situation can be extracted from Robert Franks description of the conceptualisation and voting of an agreement on the European Monetary System. In particular, this was a delicate issue as all monetary matters are also a matter of political sovereignty (Frank, 2006). Reaching an agreement required political will and a favourable context, as the text suggest; but also a great deal has to do with the normative dispositions of the Treaty of Rome. To this extent, we cannot ignore that a European monetary governance was already suggested in articles 104 (maintain condence in its [the States] currency), 105 (coordination of economic policy) and 108 (on assistance), all of them having as a perspective the establishment of a Common Market. The prowess of Valery Giscard dEstaing in attaining a European concert on the matter, thus, cannot be understood outside of the regional integration process. Similarly, in times of the rotating Presidency of the Council, it was asserted by Tallberg that the government holding the post could benet from the position. He points out that part of the agenda tends to be predetermined (...) yet, even within these constraints, the Presidency can exercise inuence by contributing its own pet issues to the agenda, attributing varying weight of the items of the agenda and keeping certain issues away from the agenda (Tallberg, 2008). Far from interpreting this implication as a national hijack, we would be inclined to see in it a certain embeddedness of the national decisionmaking in the EU framework (Eising & Jabko, 2001); in other words, as Herman Van Rompuy expresses it If national policy assume a bigger place in our Union, why wouldnt they reenforce it? (Rompuy, 2010). If the European Council and its members have been the historical engine of the European integration (Schoutheete, 2002), theyve become so through a virtuous circle where integration and the action of national governments reciprocate and inuence each other in a situation without precedents.

III. Bailing-out Greece: Europeanisation behind Merkels ip-opping stand.

1. On the Greek crisis and the German position. The economic crisis spawned from the mortgage crisis in the United States has been described as the worst since 1929s Great Depression. The crisis extended its reach across borders and hit the Eurozone with might in 2009, ushering the advent of an annus horribilis for the European construction. Indeed, economic analysts such as Clive Crook have afrmed that Europe is having a harder time in this economic crisis even than the US (Crook, 2009). As the crisis deepened, emerging economies in Central and Eastern Europe were put at risk. However, amidst this troublesome context yet another challenged emerged in the Eurozone. In Greece, years of unrestrained spending, cheap lending and failure to implement nancial reforms (CNN, 2010) exposed the Greek economic apparatus to an imminent shock. The panorama was dantesque, as the national debt, put at 300 billion), [was] bigger than the countrys economy in 2010. This derelict state of the States current account menaced the stability of the Eurozone and required an unprecedented implication of Member states to ensure the lenders that Greece was to trust, at least in honouring its previous commitments. However, the de facto solidarity expected by the Schuman Declaration was not instantaneously engaged. To bail-out Greece out its debt required for a strong commitment by the most powerful

economies of the Union. At $ 3.305 billion of nominal GDP/year, Germanys involvement was to be paramount. However, with elections taking place on May, 9th in the state with the highest GDP of the country (North Rhine-Westphalia), the position of the Head of Government, Angela Merkel, was cautious. In April, she declared to reporters that Greece had to play its part in ensuring that Greece's nances return to a solid path (AFP, 2010), putting the ball in Greeces eld and potentially washing its hands off. The strategy was clear, as Gero Neugebauer, from the Freie Universitt Berlin, afrms "if Greece is bailed out shortly before the election, it could lead to an awkward debate for Merkel, with voters questioning why there's money for Greece but not for them (Walker, 2010). A conict between Germanys commitment to the European project, its national interests and the party interests of the Christian Democratic Union, with Merkel at its head, emerged. Nevertheless, days before the election took place, the pressure from the rest of the European Union led Germany to a strong commitment of 22.4 billion euros for the Greek bailout package. In the words of Chancellor Merkel: "A good European is not necessarily one who comes to the rescue quickly, but one who rst considers the rules of the European Union and national law." (Sturdee, 2010). 2. Solidarity at last. While the discourse of the German leader demonstrates political ability, the change of heart was sincere. In the long term, Germany agreed to a substantial commitment of 120 million euros against its direct interests. Moreover, despite it being impossible to predict what the outcome of the State elections would have been in different conditions, the truth is Merkels CDU lost inuence in North Rhine-Westphalia. How can we explain this change in the most structurally-favoured country of the Union? Based on our hypothesis, we adduce Heads of State and of Government can push their particular agendas at the European Union level but their exercise of power is limited by the EU framework. The European construction has established supranational objectives that translate into priorities for Member States and their representatives in the European sphere. However, not all areas of cooperation work in the same way. Some of them, because of their association with classic State prerogatives or their closeness to considerations of sovereignty require for the highest involvement of the European leaders. Hellen Wallace has worked extensively on these areas that, for a long time, were widely thought to be beyond the reach of the EU system of governance. She identies three of them: the new singlecurrency regime; the emerging foreign, security and defence policy; and the array of measures being developed in justice and home affairs (Wallace, 2002). Now, one of the issues concerns directly the case were trying to analyse: the single-currency regime. The efforts of the Member States to take Greece out of the mud were catalysed by the will to save the Euro, whose demise would have caused economic havoc and the unraveling of the European project. The Chancellor got it right when she said that If the euro fails its not just the currency that fails, but Europe and the idea of European unication. (Scally & Collins, 2010). The level of implication is, thus, particularly profound. In contrast with intergovernmental accounts, Wallace points at another idea that might embrace more comprehensively this commitment. She believes that this type of enterprise is too ambitiously collective for the term intergovernmental to be an appropriate label and the volume and density of activity is considerable. She thus names cooperation in this area intensive transgovernmentalism. This concept that is still not part of the mainstream of the European Studies might help us understand the europeanisation of national interests, something that can be deduced from episodes like the one were dealing with. In the long run, an apparent conundrum between national/party interests and the interests of the European project was resolved in favour of further integration as the European Union constraints decision-making. Indeed, while the media in Europe concentrated on the divergences, a historical turning point occurred to the extent the 27, Germany included, eshed out an economic governance that will be based on strong economic policy coordination, reinforcement of the Stability pact and denition of a robust framework to solve crisis (Stark, 2010). While stuttering, the European project muddles through even amidst temporary national dissents.

Conclusion
The work of the European Council has been of paramount importance for the evolution of the European integration project. Its inuence is manifest as the depository of the electoral legitimacy of 27 Heads of State and of Government. However, while we have explored how this body acts in concert to defend the interests of the Member States, we have also analysed how it frames games of power between sovereign States defending national agendas. As such, we have dened the Council as both a locus of power, as De Schouteethe afrms, and a locus of powers; reecting the plurality of its actors and their interests. Nevertheless, we have recognised that the Unions institutional framework has changed power dynamics in signicant ways, ruling out business-as-usual models. On the one hand, it has provided for national leaders with novel power-wielding strategies that curb realist accounts that tend to rely on structural capabilities and; on the other hand, it has compelled nations to prioritise themes inherent to the European construction. By analysing a particular case in the which a Member State intended to pursue a rogue behaviour based on national interests, such as the initial non-commitment of Merkels Germany to the Greek bailout package, we have been able to identify the forces previously mentioned. Indeed, the institutional and peer pressure on the Chancellor to line with inter-State solidarity counterbalanced domestic concerns in favour of the European enterprise, eventually taking integration even further. While it is true that multiple factors condition the exercise of power by Member States and their highest representatives in the frame of the Union, identifying them takes us further into understanding the unidentied political object that the Union has become.

II.

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