March 26, 2020 / By mobanmarket
The German diplomat will be a very different secretary-general of the Council of Ministers.Reserved adviser
The secretariat of the Council of Ministers is set for a major change in culture when Uwe Corsepius, currently EU affairs adviser to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, takes charge as secretary-general next June.
Corsepius will take over from Pierre de Boissieu, a French diplomat who has run the Council’s administrative machine for ten years. Under de Boissieu, the Council has been a francophone fiefdom. Corsepius, however, hardly speaks French and, in what amounts to a linguistic coup, English and German will be the working languages of the inner circle in the Council’s Justus Lipsius headquarters.
Whereas de Boissieu is regarded – positively or negatively – as a master practitioner of French diplomatic arts, it is equally common to hear said of Corsepius that he is “no diplomat”.
One reason for this is that Corsepius’s route to the top did not follow the traditional career-path usually taken by high-ranking German diplomats. His background in business studies and international economics included expos-ure to the revolutionary ideas of Horst Steinmann – who advocated testing ideas against practical situations rather than abstract applications of theory – and to the broad-picture thinking at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the Inter-national Monetary Fund. Corsepius worked within the German chancellery successively for Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder before he caught the attention of Merkel.
Corsepius is regarded as very blunt and straightforward. One senior diplomat says he “speaks like a finance ministry official”. Another describes him as “Merkel’s blunt instrument” because of his way of getting things done. He frequently advances extreme positions and then refines them in negotiations. This uncharacteristically direct approach has shocked and surprised many officials and diplomats in Brussels. Those who have worked with him say that his unconventional background for an EU policy adviser, explains why Corsepius acts the way he does.
The shock appointment, which trigger-ed an adverse reaction in some quarters, has been compounded by Corsepius being prepared to talk openly about defending German national interests. While this sort of language would not come as a surprise from French or British civil servants, it jars in circles where German diplomats are expected to talk about putting Euro-pean interests ahead of national ones.
A foretaste of this more outspoken and assertive tone from German diplomats and politicians was provided during the Greek and eurozone debt crises earlier this year. Germany conspicuously refused to endorse a rescue package for Greece until May, although the country’s problems had been apparent since February. The consequent frustration and anger in the European Commission and member-state finance ministries was targeted mainly at Corsepius as the lead “Bedenkensträger”, someone expressing reservations about anything that resembled a bail-out. Corsepius argued that bail-outs for eurozone countries were expressly ruled out in the treaty. He claimed that Germany’s support for creating the euro had been conditioned on this principle and warned that any apparent breach of this rule would be challenged in Germany’s constitutional court. No one failed to appreciate the risk that a court ruling against the EU’s rescue mechanism would torpedo it, and that it would probably sink the euro too.
Well before the eurozone crisis, Corsepius made his reputation in international negotiations, as Merkel’s sherpa in negotiating an agreement on the Lisbon treaty. When Merkel became chancellor in November 2005, Corsepius was in charge of economic aspects of European integration and was negotiating the EU’s 2007-13 budget. His performance impressed Merkel so much that she pro-moted him to replace Rainer Silberberg, her then EU affairs adviser, at the end of 2005. Diplomats remark that the appointment caused surprise, as Corsepius is not a member of Merkel’s Christan Democratic Union and party membership counts highly in the chancellery. They also suggest that the appointment showed Merkel’s appreciation for his ability to deliver results and for his policy advice.
Under Merkel, his first priority was to prepare Germany’s presidency of the EU in the first half of 2007. The main challenge was to salvage parts of the EU constitution, which had been rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2004. Cors-epius organised the network of sherpas that drew up the Berlin declaration – a document approved by EU leaders in March 2007 as a political commitment to agreeing treaty reform. He then secured agreement on the Lisbon treaty, skilfully steering a difficult course between the member states that wanted to preserve as much as possible from the EU consti-tution and those, such as France, the Netherlands and the UK, that wanted the new texts to be sufficiently different to avoid having to hold referenda that they might lose. The work of the sherpa group proved so thorough that an inter-governmental conference to finalise the Lisbon treaty completed its work within four months.
When he takes over the running of the Council secretariat, Corsepius will be running an institution whose power has been enhanced by the Lisbon treaty he worked to deliver. The European Council now has formal status as an EU institution and a full-time president, Herman Van Rompuy. Its role is to “define the general political guidelines of the Union”, and the secretary-general will be a crucial link in ensuring that Van Rompuy is able to get the member states to agree common priorities and follow them through.
Corsepius, married and with two children, comes to Brussels with a reputation for hard work and first-class analytical skills. He is expected to approach the job of secretary-general with the same professional detachment that he displayed working for Merkel, acting as an impartial civil servant rather than pursuing his own political agenda. Elmar Brok, a German centre-right MEP who followed the Lisbon treaty negotiations, says that Corsepius will be less of a “backroom activist” than de Boissieu. Another aspect of the cultural change that Corsepius will bring is his taste in holidays. Not for him the predictable Eurocrat destinations of Tuscany or Provence. Corsepius prefers to take his holidays in Florida.
But Corsepius also brings with him a reputation for colourless efficiency. Sources who know him from Berlin describe him as “dry as a bone” and “not the kind of guy you’d prop up a bar with”. He is supremely self-confident, a characteristic that some-times verges on arrogance, according to another source. Andrew Duff, a UK Libe-ral MEP, says that Corsepius should “make himself liked” if he is to be a real success in his new job. But that is not his style.
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