Euroskeptics in Britain are fond of complaining that decisions in Brussels are made by “unelected faceless bureaucrats.” The European Union’s defenders in Britain — never very effective — couldn’t kill off this cliché. The democratic mandates of the Council of Ministers (representatives of national governments) or the directly elected European Parliament apparently don’t count. What matters is the European Commission, home of the “unelected” and “faceless” bureaucrats.
It probably didn’t help that the tradition of successive British governments was to nominate as EU commissioners either second-rank politicians (in recent times, Jonathan Hill, Catherine Ashton, both from the House of Lords) or first-rank politicians fallen on hard times (Neil Kinnock, Chris Patten, Leon Brittan). Neither type was going to inspire the British electorate to love and respect the Commission.
However, the recent ructions in British politics have given rise to another break from tradition. To take the place of Jonathan Hill, who resigned in the wake of the referendum result, David Cameron — by then halfway out the Downing Street door — nominated neither a first- nor second-rank politician, but Julian King, a Foreign Office wallah, who had recently become the British ambassador to France. His previous jobs include a stint as head of the private office of Ashton. At last — a true faceless bureaucrat, never elected to anything.
On Monday night, this bureaucrat appeared before the European Parliament’s Civil liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, whose task it was to assess his fitness for membership of the College of European Commissioners, and specifically for a newly created portfolio of commissioner for security union. His face turned out to be similar to Hill’s — owlish, bespectacled, sandwiched between grey suit below and greying hair above.
Conspiracy theorists see in this nomination of a bureaucrat a further plot by perfidious Albion — this time to undermine Jean-Claude Juncker’s ambition for a more political Commission. Judith Sargentini, a Dutch Green MEP, observed that he was “a diplomat, a civil servant, not a politician.” So was his nomination an attempt to depoliticize the Commission?
King’s response was: “I am not a politician, but I have spent the last 25 years swimming in a political sea.”
He neglected to add that for much of those 25 years, he was swimming against a strengthening Euroskeptic tide. A civil servant, albeit one required to serve his political masters, whatever their party, would surely have noticed, unless he was an exceedingly cold fish.
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King came across not so much cold, as correct. He was unfailingly polite, but without the warmth (natural or learnt) of some politicians.
The habits of the civil servant are deeply engrained — particularly those of the ministerial adviser. His response to many of the policy questions from MEPs, albeit dressed up in a variety of fancy phrases, was: We will look at the options. Those MEPs wanting to know where he stood on particular options found him sure-footed, but frustratingly non-committal. He clearly knew the issues inside-out, whether data encryption, terrorist financing or firearms control. He could bandy European jargon and acronyms with the best of the Parliament’s experts. And yet he was not in the habit of making declarations on his own account: His habit has been to set out policy options to his political masters, for them to take decisions.
Those MEPs concerned about just how this new security portfolio would fit into the existing Commission structure — cutting across Commission departments, answering to Vice President Frans Timmermans, coordinated with Dimitris Avramopoulos, the commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, and Věra Jourová, the commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality — found not a trace of a politician’s amour-propre or turf war in King’s answers.
Without irony, he said he was used to a culture in which people worked together in teams. Those in his audience who had watched British politicians tearing themselves apart over the referendum campaign may have found that hard to swallow — nor would they have recognized from the referendum campaign his claim that evidence-based policymaking was “the tradition in which I have been brought up.” But he wasn’t talking about British politics, only about its civil service.
“It is entirely natural that commissioners should work together as a team,” he said. “I would consider myself an extra additional resource for that team.”
King did drop a few crumbs of illumination or indiscretion. “Last time I was in the Commission, I worked in a [directorate-general] that can remain nameless but it worked very much in a silo and sometimes that was effective and sometimes it wasn’t,” he said.
The MEPs had King’s resumé in front of him, so could see that he must be referring to the department for trade, where he headed the office of the then commissioner.
He referred to David Cameron, who had hosted an international summit on terrorist financing, as “the ex-prime minister and ex-member of parliament,” which might have betrayed an eagerness to dispatch Cameron to history, or just a fascination with that day’s announcement that Cameron was resigning his seat.
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For the most part, King avoided being caught up in discussions about the U.K.’s future. He refused to get dragged into speculation about Brexit; he politely rebuffed the UKIP MEPs who said he should be speaking for Britain.
But his mastery of the security and policing dossiers was such that he felt compelled to admit that if the U.K. did not opt in to the broadening remit of Europol, there would be “a problem.” There would, he said, be a gap between Europol gaining new powers next year and Britain forming a new relationship with Europol when it left the EU.
Two Bulgarian MEPs expressed unhappiness about their country being given only partial access to the Schengen Information System. It was in the system for police and judicial co-operation, but not for the exchange of border and migration information, though Bulgarian officials were required to patrol an external EU border. King remarked that it was a matter for the Schengen states to decide, but he questioned whether the arrangement was in the EU’s general interest.
Jean Lambert, a British Green MEP, asked him about the tension when dealing with third countries between respect for fundamental rights and political expediency, which brought a strong declaration that respect for fundamental rights should be paramount, and a condemnation of extraordinary rendition.
What drained the encounter of excitement was that the outcome was never in doubt: The committee was always going to give him its approval. His competence was not in question. As a former member of the EU’s Political and Security Committee, he knows where the member countries stand on each of the main dossiers. As a former director-general for consular matters, he knows the issues of border control better than most MEPs. As an ambassador in Ireland and France, he has had too much experience of terrorist threats.
The lack of political allegiance counted, at least on this occasion, in his favor. None of the main parties was going to perceive him as a political opponent. Only the Euroskeptics would have been offended by his measured, pragmatic Euro-enthusiasm: His argument was that international threats required a cross-border coordination and response, but he balanced this by paying proper respect to the responsibilities and competences of the national governments.
On the evidence of this hearing, management by faceless bureaucrat seems a reasonably attractive option. Of course, where it often breaks down is when the rationality of the bureaucrat is confronted by the irrational thinking of politicians and citizens. The MEPs did not have sufficient self-awareness to ask him about that. It is a test that lies ahead.