*** Le quotidien considère que Gordon Brown a une façon étrange de montrer qu'il est aussi pro-européen qu'il le dit. "Le Premier ministre Tony Blair a toujours choisi un haut diplomate du ministère des Affaires étrangères comme conseiller sur l'Europe. (...) La semaine dernière, M. Brown a retiré ce poste aux Affaires étrangères pour le donner à un haut-fonctionnaire du ministère des Finances, Jon Cunliffe. La nomination de M. Cunliffe est un acte significatif. Il nous rappelle que M. Brown déteste le ministère des Affaires étrangères. Et cela confirme qu'il préfère s'entourer de gens qu'il connaît. (...) Donner la charge de la politique européenne à un haut-fonctionnaire issu du département le plus anti-européen du gouvernement, et dont le CV inclue un rôle clé dans la campagne de Brown contre la monnaie unique, envoie un signal qu'il serait illogique d'ignorer. Il dit aux observateurs que le nouveau Premier ministre veut considérer l'Europe comme une question davantage économique que politique."
The Guardian
Eutotopics
(11.06.2007
*****************************
*** Time to build bridges
In private, Gordon Brown has been assuring pro-European admirers that his government will be much more committed to the European Union than his record at the Treasury suggests. For that to be so, much will have to change in substance and in style. Over the years, the chancellor has built up a reputation as a Eurosceptic politician. He has done this principally as the Blair government's most determined opponent of Britain entering the single currency - a project which he set himself to frustrating from the moment he arrived in the Treasury .
Mr Brown can claim that his economic record vindicates his stance on the Euro. But his impatience with the EU has also been evident in other matters too: in the dismissive way he treats European finance ministers' meetings, in the rubbishing of Europe's economic record in his set-piece speeches, in his disdain towards European social democratic parties and in the way his minions brief the anti-European press that a visit by Mr Brown to Brussels is a Daniel in the lions' den moment. Mr Brown's lack of sympathetic interest in Europe has been consistent over the past decade. Not surprisingly, European governments are not braced for an easy relationship - whatever Mr Brown is saying to his pro-European friends here.
If Mr Brown has a pro-European strategy up his sleeve, his early appointments have been a funny way of showing it. Under Tony Blair, the Downing Street adviser on Europe has always been a senior Foreign Office diplomat - in recent years Sir Stephen Wall, followed by Kim Darroch, who is shortly to become this country's EU ambassador. Last week Mr Brown took the No 10 Europe job away from the Foreign Office and gave it instead to a senior Treasury official, Jon Cunliffe. Mr Cunliffe's appointment is a resonant act. It reminds us that Mr Brown dislikes the Foreign Office. It confirms that he prefers to surround himself with people he knows. Most of all, whether Mr Brown intends it to or not, it sends out an anti-European message and will have been understood as such by other EU governments .
Putting a senior man from Whitehall's most consistently anti-European department, whose CV includes a key role in Mr Brown's anti-single currency campaign, in charge of Europe policy sends a signal that would be perverse to ignore. It tells the watchers that the new prime minister intends to play Europe as a pre-eminently economic rather than political issue. It suggests the Brown government's European agenda will focus on maintaining the British rebate within the EU budget, attacking the common agricultural policy, supporting the deregulatory Lisbon agenda and maximising this country's constitutional disengagement with its partners, especially in regulatory matters. Whether by instinct or electoral calculation, it marks Mr Brown as a sceptic on European matters. It will be seen in some quarters as a hostile gesture.
The first major test of Mr Brown's European policy comes when EU governments meet in Brussels this month just before he takes over from Mr Blair. The governments will try to agree on a treaty version of the wrecked EU constitution so severely modified that further referendums on it will not be needed, including in Britain. Mr Blair (with Mr Brown's agreement) and President Sarkozy want a minimalist deal that breaks the current logjam. Chancellor Merkel wants something larger, perhaps including a charter of European rights and ending the national veto on justice and home affairs issues, that could cause fresh divisions. This weekend, the Eurosceptic UK press have been cranking up the issue in the usual "threat to Britain" manner. It would be easy for Mr Brown to play to this gallery as before. But the incoming prime minister has to decide. Does he want to bash Europe? Or does he now want to help build it? It is a big strategic moment. Mr Brown should embrace the European option, in spite of the political difficulties.
The Guardian
