MBR_ISSUE 47_JAN_LR

PLAYBOOK’S QUIZ & TOP 10 MOMENTS OF 2018
Malta Business Review
I PRESENTED BY POLITICO’S 20TH EU STUDIES FAIR
The power game: The Greens may not have won a golden
ticket into government in Munich (they did in Luxembourg,
and for the record they doubled their ministerial posts after
another German regional election, in Hesse). But the big
questions facing them in 2019 are how to make an impact
in those parts of Europe where green issues are still widely
considered a luxury — and how to transform votes into
power. (That’s something the EPP is particularly good at.).
5. MATTEO SALVINI HAS THE TIME OF HIS LIFE: “The 5Star
Movement and the League have reached an agreement on
a political government headed by Giuseppe Conte as prime
minister,” the party’s two leaders, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo
Salvini, said in a joint statement on May 30, Playbook
wrote at the time. What followed was a demonstration of
power — by the League, which was rising in the polls and
ergo compromising far less on its promises to voters. Case
in point: The number of irregular migrants arriving in Italy
in 2018 went down by some 80 percent compared to 2017.
The key question, for the League, for the Italian political
landscape and for the EU, is whether Matteo Salvini
is heading towards an alliance of Europe’s right-wing
populists, or whether he’ll be seduced by the siren call of
Italy’s center right, changing course and returning to its
fold.
6. FACEBOOK’S TURBULENT YEAR: Where to start? With
the Cambridge Analytica scandal? With Vestager weighing
up whether there are grounds to open a probe into
Facebook’s European tax arrangements, as she deepens
her multinational investigation into sweetheart tax deals?
Perhaps the competition commissioner’s (and her fellow
regulators’) new cause célèbre: Big Tech’s use of data? Or
the various calls across the Continent for Facebook to deal
with Russian trolls? Facebook lurched from one problem to
another in 2018. And 2019 isn’t looking cruisier.
7. JEAN-CLAUDE, A BRUTAL KILLER: A strategy that might
work: ignoring him. Where were Jean-Claude Juncker
and Donald Tusk in that photo of world leaders trying
to talk Trump into signing their joint statement? Sitting
behind everyone else, watching on. In July, Trump finally
appeared to have understood why four European countries
are represented by six people, as he seemed to develop
a grudging frenemy relationship with Juncker. Top quote,
according to diplomats who followed discussions, from this
July 26 Playbook: “Jean-Claude is so brutal, a killer.”
Juncker’s version of events: “We negotiated for three and
a half hours. It’s good what we’ve managed to agree on,”
Juncker told Playbook over the phone on the way to the
airport after his meeting with Trump. What was the big win
for the EU? “He has agreed to not increase tariffs on cars as
long as we are on negotiating terms.”
How did it go, Mr. President? “Talks were alleviated by
the fact that we get along well, surprisingly,” Juncker said.
Trump “appreciates that I challenged him twice at G7
meetings, hard at it but polite in tone. He doesn’t like those
who beat about the bush.” And as of this morning, Trump
and Juncker were still on negotiating terms — despite
many open threats by the U.S. side to slap car tariffs on
European exports (a humiliating summons of German car
bosses to the White House included).
The next negotiation round is in January: Cecilia
Malmström, the EU’s trade commissioner, will travel to
Washington January 9 to take part in trilateral discussions
between the EU, U.S. and Japan “to address issues such
as trade-distortive practices,” according to a Commission
spokeswoman. “During that visit, Commissioner
Malmström will also meet the United States Trade
Representative Robert Lighthizer, in the context of the
executive working group on transatlantic trade relations.”
News claxon: Malmström is not the only one who’ll be
traveling westbound in the weeks to come. Commission
Secretary-General Martin Selmayr has pencilled in a
(yet-to-be-confirmed) meeting with Trump advisor Larry
Kudlow mid-January, Playbook hears.
8. MERKEL’S SPÄTHERBST: “Late fall might have begun for
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after her CDU and CSU
Bundestag members rejected the man she chose to lead
the parliamentary group. Volker Kauder, a close Merkel
ally who has overseen the group for 13 years, lost in a
secret ballot to challenger Ralph Brinkhaus. The result sent
shockwaves — which made things wobble, but not yet
collapse — through the German capital,” Playbook wrote
September 26.
But wait: Merkel’s defeat in that instance was also the
first step of her (thus far successful) strategy to cling to
power. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Merkel’s pick for
her successor, won the race for the CDU chairmanship
in December. Merkel will now stay on as chancellor. (It’s
actually quite tricky, both constitutionally and politically, to
unseat her.) Friedrich Merz, the CDU’s 48 percent man (and
we’ve witnessed how much desperate noise 48 percenters
can make, without actually changing things), had to resort
to a FAZ interview to express his interest in a Cabinet
post. Merkel, via spokesman Steffen Seibert, declared she
doesn’t plan a reshuffle.
9. MARTIN SELMAYR’S LIFE WITH, AND AFTER, JUNCKER:
“There is life, and power, for Martin Selmayr after Jean-
Claude Juncker’s term as Commission president runs out,”
we were among the first to report on a fateful February
morning.
It was this year’s great tale of power in Brussels. Juncker
brought his College of Commissioners to heel (which may
not have been that hard), before then doing the same for
the EPP and its leader (and Selmayr opponent) Manfred
Weber (which was much harder) — by threatening to quit
if he didn’t get his way on Selmayr’s promotion.
The affair kept Brussels busy all the way until Parliament’s
last voting session in December, when MEPs backed a
report calling for the Commission secretary-general to
resign. He didn’t. If anything, the whole saga displayed the
fact that there is a majority against Parliament’s biggest
group (which mostly abstained in the December 13 vote)
— as long as there’s a cause worth fighting (or, as in this
case, against).
10.WEBER STEPS BACK FROM ORBÁN: Manfred Weber,
the European People’s Party group leader and his party’s
Spitzenkandidat for the EU election, in September issued
a warning to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán: The PM needs to
compromise on issues such as his NGO law and the Central
European University if he wants his EPP family to vote
against opening an Article 7 procedure that could suspend
Hungary’s EU voting rights. “We expect the Hungarian
government to make a move towards their EU partners.
Europe’s fundamental values must be respected by all,”
Weber told Playbook in Strasbourg in September.
That’s a red line that, for once, was easy to follow up on.
Weber — as the only CSU MEP — voted in favor of the
Article 7 procedure. That process is now languishing in
Council.
Then there’s the procedure to suspend Fidesz from the EPP.
“I have asked the European People’s Party to exclude the
Hungarian Fidesz party,” Jean-Claude Juncker told Welt am
Sonntag, adding: “I think the Christian democratic values
on which the EPP is based are no longer compatible with
Fidesz’s policy.” But Juncker said his motion was rejected.
The CEU eventually left Budapest and moved to Vienna.
Reading between the lines: Message to Emmanuel
Macron: As a good European, you gotta give, not just take.
THANKS: Lili Bayer and Laura Greenhalgh, and our
producer Jillian Deutsch.
QUIZ ANSWERS …
1 = b (her name is worth 38 points in the German edition,
39 points in the English one)
2 = a (David Davis spent just four hours with Barnier)
3= c (as any good Russian spy tourist knows, the spire is
123 metres tall)
4 = c (thick-skinned and prone to bursts of anger … a rhino
was adopted by Viktor Orbán)
5 = b (Neve Te Aroha is the PM’s daughter. Te Aroha means
“bright and radiant” in Maori)
6 = a (Macron’s approval rating was 47 percent in January
and 27 percent in December)
7 = a (of course Trump congratulated Putin)
8 = b (out were Paolo Gentiloni, Miro Cerar and Mariano
Rajoy. In were Giuseppe Conte, Marjan Šarec and Pedro
Sánchez)
9 = b (“little ethnic shops” have become “a meeting place
for drug deals and people who raise hell”)
10 = a (“Ooh see that girl, watch that scene, making the
U.K. scream”)
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