European Leaders Face Voter Impatience After Elections
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Version 0 of 1. BERLIN — If there is one thing her admirers and detractors agree upon, it is that Chancellor Angela Merkel moves deftly, and in these past few years of European crisis stuck stubbornly to policies despite dire predictions that they could lead to the end of the shared currency, the euro. But the outcome of the European parliamentary elections last month has created fresh fissures: broadly speaking, between those who want more European integration, or much less. And these are now pulling Ms. Merkel in visibly different directions, leaving her looking unusually unsure on her feet and Europe bereft of the closest thing it has to a leader. “It’s not often that Angela Merkel cuts a bad figure,” the weekly Die Zeit pronounced. “But since the European parliamentary elections, she looks almost lost, tugged here and there by forces that she does not control.” The likely result is that it will take Europe’s bickering leaders weeks more to sort out who gets the top jobs that are opening in its institutions. On Monday, the haggling continued as Ms. Merkel met in Sweden with the leaders of other center-right parties in Europe, including Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain. Ms. Merkel, nothing if not patient, has stressed that she favors “thoroughness over haste,” apparently even if that leaves Europe looking ever more like a tortoise to its citizens. It was not supposed to be like this. The leaders of the Europe Union’s 28 nations acknowledged that the mechanisms in Brussels often seem remote or bland to voters, and they thought they had devised a way to make the European parliamentary elections more relevant. The biggest political blocs would each nominate a top candidate, and the winning contender would head up the union’s powerful administrative arm, the European Commission. But then the nationalists and populists whose agenda is strongly anti-Europe made dramatic gains. In France, they finished a shocking first. In Britain, always skeptical of the European project, they also finished in front, putting even more pressure on Mr. Cameron either to withdraw altogether from the union or at least to make it more palatable to his compatriots by recapturing powers from Brussels. On May 27, two days after the elections, Europe’s leaders pondered the outcome over dinner in Brussels. Afterward, Ms. Merkel grew uncharacteristically testy with German reporters who questioned her lukewarm endorsement of Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Luxembourg prime minister and veteran European functionary who was chosen before the elections as the center-right’s top candidate to be commission’s next president. Ms. Merkel had signed off on him, but her own Christian Democratic Union campaigned using her face, not that of Mr. Juncker, and Mr. Cameron has made no secret of his opposition. Then, in the German Parliament last week, Ms. Merkel unexpectedly sang Britain’s praises. Yes, she acknowledged, Britain “is certainly no cozy partner.” “Britain has already profited and gotten a great deal from Europe,” she said. “But equally Britain has also given Europe much.” Germany and Britain “share common values and interests,” she stressed, underscoring that “good results in Brussels, which take everything into consideration, have rarely come together hastily. They need time. That we have, and so I am using it.” She went on once again to endorse Mr. Juncker in terms that left so much room for reversal that even her parliamentary opponents — and Mr. Juncker’s political foes — demanded that once and for all she come out in the open and stop back-room dealings over who leads Europe. Mr. Cameron has campaigned, so far without success, to block Mr. Juncker. One problem is that Britain, and Mr. Cameron, have little political capital to expend. Another is the lack — so far, at least — of an alternative candidate to Mr. Juncker. Germany has become dominant in Europe in part through support of European unity. It takes continental union seriously — its participation in the European parliamentary elections even rose from 43 percent to 48 percent, and the results were staunchly pro-European. The news media here cover the workings of Brussels in detail less seen in Britain or France. So the question of whether Europe’s leaders once again ride roughshod over their citizens and breeze past Mr. Juncker in the hopes of gaining traction with a fresher face is not just an idle debate for a select few. Commentators and ordinary citizens have seized on the hesitancy over Mr. Juncker to ponder aloud how much longer Europe can scorn those citizens who do turn out to vote for the European Parliament (this year, it was just over 43 percent of the eligible 380 million voters). If Europe’s heads of state and government “now ignore Juncker’s election victory and haggle out some president of the Commission, it just mocks the will of voters,” wrote Stefan Ulbrich in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Sunday. “E.U. citizens would then feel themselves bulldozed. Europe would simply confirm those critics who see it as a monstrous machine, remote from the people. And at the next European elections, the polling places would be empty.” Stephen Castle contributed reporting from London. |