RSS

Leadership is the talk of town these days in Brussels. Finally, it seems, the crisis of the EU is taken for what it really is: a fundamental lack of political leadership on behalf of almost all the heads of state and government of the EU-27. Two exceptions are usually made in this collective finger-pointing: Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker. It is probably no surprise that the lack of leadership becomes so apparent at a time when the lonely German presidency is trying its best to push a tired, self-doubting, and exhausted EU towards a compromise on the most contentious issue: the constitutional treaty (or what remains of it).

But what is leadership in the EU? What is it in general? During a conference last week in Brussels an interesting suggestion appeared in a side note most attendants did not even take notice of. Leadership, it said, is to make the common interest of all those involved visible. This includes the leaders themselves but also those they are supposed to lead, i.e. the nations and peoples and citizens of Europe.

This is an interesting idea. No grandiose and foggy definition of leadership as a miraculous, potentially dangerous ability as undefinable as grace or charisma. No academic attempt to squeeze the seemingly ungraspable into a quantitative research model.

The more you think about this definition of leadership, the more sense it makes. Look at the lost constitutional referenda in France and the Netherlands. In France, a skeptical Jacques Chirac, humiliated during a TV debate with young French voters whose language he could not even understand, fell silent instead of fighting for the yes vote. In the Netherlands, Premier Balkenende did not want a referendum at all. When parliament insisted, he capitulated and made it clear that he did not want anything to do with it. Both leaders made it visible, in the physical sense of the word, that the constitution was not a common interest between them and their constituents. The damage was done, because whatever is visible will be seen.

The visibility thing also makes sense when you look at more recent events: Mrs. Merkel’s determined efforts to make common interests visible in the Berlin declaration; Poland’s efforts to turn the politically irrelevant issue of voting weights in the EU Council of Ministers into a visible sign of diverging interests; Czech President Vaclav Klaus’ attempt to destroy any visibility by creating as much fog of resistance as possible.

Behind all this looms a much bigger—and potentially more disastrous—question for Europe. Why is an increasing number of European leaders not willing or able to see the common interest of Europe’s member states? If they don’t see this common interest, how can they possibly make it visible to others? The real problem of the EU does not lie in the increased number of member states. It lies in the fact that EU political leaders see a different thing than their predecessors did. They don’t see the pressing need to act as one. They don’t see prosperity, freedom and peace endangered in the same way their predecessors did. That’s puzzling, because the facts are on the table. The pressure of globalization, negative demographics, climate change, uncontrollable migration, low growth rates, energy blackmail—all of this happens every day. It is the urgent duty of Europe’s leaders to make the common interests in all of these issues visible. It’s the vision thing.

Jan Techau is the head of the Alfred von Oppenheim-Center and a resident fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. From 2003 to 2006 he worked at the German Ministry of Defence in Berlin on the Bundeswehr’s media projects and on the drafting and implementation of long-term communication concepts. From 2001 to 2003 he was the the Security and Defense correspondent for the Bundeswehr’s online and print media.

Related Materials from the Atlantic Community:

• Johannes Bohnen on Collective Intelligence and the Future of Decision Making