Geschil over voorzitterschap EP-commissie buitenlandse zaken (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - German conservative MEP Elmar Brok is fighting a losing battle to keep his job as chair of the European Parliament foreign affairs committee, with his scrap against Polish deputy Jacek Saryusz-Wolski swelling to epic proportions as EU prime ministers line up on Brok's side in a situation causing amusement in Brussels.

German and Polish MEPs in the EPP-ED group - the largest faction in the house - spent Wednesday (24 January) haggling over a Polish offer which says Mr Brok can stay in place if they get the vice-presidency of the group, the chair of the budget committee, the vice-chair of the constitutional committee, the vice chair of the regions committee and the vice-chair of the Belarus delegation.

Meanwhile, time is ticking toward a deadline next Thursday for the EPP-ED to sort out a mess which is keeping other committees in limbo and generating unprecedented procedural anomalies such as having the same man (Joseph Daul) as president of the EPP-ED group and chairman of the agriculture committee.

Polish media reports that Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, Croatia prime minister Ivo Sanander and Austrian ex-chancellor Wolfgang Schussel wrote this week to EPP-ED group leaders to lobby for Mr Brok, while German chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl have in the past week telephoned Mr Saryusz-Wolski's Civic Platform party in Warsaw to push the Brok line.

The row has spilled over into Polish national politics, with prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski accusing the leader of the Civic Platform opposition party, Donald Tusk, of being a wimp "who cannot say no to the world's powers" and hinting that Mr Tusk's cozy chats with Berlin on Polish "foreign policy" are somehow unpatriotic, in a populist nod to Germanophobe elements in Polish society.

Meanwhile, the two personalities at the centre of the storm - the 61-year old Mr Brok, known for smoking cigars and having a hot temper and the 58-year old Mr Saryusz-Wolski, known for more genteel manners and cut-throat political manouevering - have tried to remain aloof.

"Let's leave these [German vs. Polish] emotions and associations out of this," Mr Saryusz-Wolski told Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. "This is nothing to do with me. I am not taking part in the negotiations," Mr Brok told another Polish daily, Rzeczpospolita.

A bit of schadenfreude

"This is being seen as an EPP-ED problem, so people from other parties are just amused spectators or indulging in a bit of schadenfreude - Brok has a very strong character," a parliamentary official said. "But there are also some people who are getting fed up with the Germans being so numerous in the EPP-ED group and parliament as a whole, especially now that we have Merkel as well [under the German EU presidency]."

The dispute has also thrown a spotlight on the Byzantine complexity of the European Parliament's selection method for committee chairs, which involves four layers of decision-making and a 19th century Belgian mathematician called Victor D'Hondt, who designed a system for setting the order of choice of places among political groups of various sizes.

The first layer involves MEP group leaders using the D'Hondt system to assign committee jobs among their factions. Next, each group uses the D'Hondt system internally to assign jobs among its national delegations. Then parliament in plenary votes to approve the general composition of the committees. Finally, each new committee has an internal vote to approve its chairman and vice-chairmen.

The D'Hondt system

Under the D'Hondt system, Mr Saryusz-Wolski has a right to claim the foreign affairs job, but in practice political deals can cut through the maths to put people wherever MEPs like.

The foreign affairs committee has the most prestige because it is the face of the European Parliament to the outside world and hosts VIPs, but it carries no real power as EU member states handle foreign policy on a largely intergovernmental level.

The most power lies with committees that co-legislate with member states on issues such as EU spending or industrial reform: the budget, industry, economy and environment committees are plum picks, with the budget control committee also becoming fashionable. The last-choice committees tend to be: culture, fisheries and women's rights.