EU loses a president

Imagine this scenario in Australia. The premier of one of the smaller states, in power for four years, resigns following a cabinet crisis but remains in office in a caretaker capacity. During that time, he is appointed as governor-general, although he is only 43; he resigns as premier just before taking up the position. Then, before his term has expired, he announces that he will run as leader of his party for federal parliament, but will not actually step down as governor-general until after the election. At that point the state premiers will have to meet to select a new governor-general.

Although some of those moves would be legally possible here, they are practically unthinkable: they are simply not how we do things. But Europe is different. So yesterday Charles Michel, the European Union’s head of state, or president of the European Council – not to be confused with the president of the European Commission, which is the equivalent of prime minister – announced that, even without resigning beforehand, he would be a candidate in the EU elections to be held in early June.

Michel, a liberal, had served as prime minister of Belgium from 2014 until he took the presidency in 2019. That was nothing out of the ordinary (although the very long caretaker period while the Belgian parties haggled over forming a government was); his two predecessors had also been prime ministers when appointed. And one of them, Poland’s Donald Tusk, returned to national politics after his term at the EU had expired, becoming prime minister again just last month.

But to run for the European parliament while still being its head of state is a novelty, to say the least. In Australia we would probably think that such a game of musical chairs indicated either a serious shortage of qualified personnel or a disdain for the role of the voters (or both). Only the fact that the EU isn’t a real country, but just a supranational organisation with some of the trappings of one, allows it to get away with tricks like this.

The search is now on for a replacement for Michel, whose term would not normally be up until November. In the usual schedule, the position would be part of the general process of horse trading that follows the EU elections (here’s my account of how it worked last time); now they will have to try to get it sorted first. Otherwise the prime minister of the country holding the rotating presidency for the time being will take the job on an acting basis, and from July that will be Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

So fresh from mourning the death of one of its great pioneers, Jacques Delors, who died just before Christmas, the EU now has to find someone who can negotiate today’s difficult political climate and take the project forward.