Tim King writes POLITICO‘s Brussels Sketch.
The scandal rocking Irish politics is making life uncomfortable for Phil Hogan. But when it comes to resignations, there’s one rule for domestic politicians and another for European commissioners.
As European commissioner for trade, Hogan is insulated from the wrath of the electorate or the whims of his national government. That means no Irish politician can oblige Hogan to give up his post as the price to pay for “golfgate” — a gala dinner of Ireland’s parliamentary golf society attended by some 80 guests that apparently breached the country’s coronavirus restrictions on social gatherings.
That puts Hogan in a very different position from other Irish politicians who attended the dinner. Dara Calleary was obliged to resign as agriculture minister and subsequently as deputy leader of Fianna Fáil, the largest party in the government coalition. Jerry Buttimer, a senior figure in Fine Gael, the second-largest party, lost his position as chair of the Senate. Six senators lost their party whip.
According to a government spokesperson, both Micheál Martin, the prime minister, and Leo Varadkar, the deputy prime minister and leader of Fine Gael, spoke to Hogan and asked him to “consider his position” — with the implication that they would have obliged him to resign if they had the power to do so.
Hogan’s calculation is that, having apologized for his attendance, he can wait for the uproar to subside.
But there are good reasons why they don’t have that power. That a national government cannot force its commissioner to resign is essential to the Commission’s credibility as guardian of the EU’s treaties and enforcer of EU law. If a newly elected government could remove a commissioner partway through the EU institution’s five-year term, then, given the electoral cycle of 27 states, the College of Commissioners would be in a state of perpetual upheaval.
Moreover, controversial decisions taken against a member country — over state aid or compliance with environmental law, for example — would be called into question if the commissioners involved were seen to be acting under threat of dismissal by their governments.
Hogan could, in theory, be dismissed by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. But it is hard to see what advantage she could accrue from toppling her trade commissioner and destabilizing her administration for the sake of calming a political storm in a country that accounts for only 1.1 percent of the EU’s population.
Only once has a commissioner been obliged to resign — Malta’s John Dalli in 2012, amid allegations that the tobacco industry sought to bribe the then commissioner for health to alter proposed legislation.
No such corruption is involved in the case of the golf society dinner. The allegation is rather one of rank hypocrisy: that the politicians in attendance were ignoring the coronavirus measures they had imposed on others.
Hogan’s calculation is that, having apologized for his attendance, he can wait for the uproar to subside. That may well be von der Leyen’s conclusion also — though she will be sensitive to whether Hogan’s actions (now the subject of increased scrutiny) start damaging the Commission’s reputation.
Hogan’s popularity back home might take a temporary hit, but that would be nothing new: It’s the reason he was nominated to the Commission in the first place.
As Ireland’s minister for the environment, community and local government from 2011 to 2014, Hogan had pushed through reforms to local taxation and the installation of water metering that were politically unpopular. His nomination to the Commission was both respite and reward.
It was a similar story with other European commissioners that Dublin has sent to Brussels. Ireland’s tradition is to nominate to the European Commission someone — whether from Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael — whose domestic political career is over. Although they stay in touch with domestic politics, they are no longer a serious player.
Take Hogan’s immediate predecessor, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. She had been nominated to the European Court of Auditors in 2000, after her domestic political career petered out following a failed bid for leadership of Fianna Fáil. Her time at the Commission was the final chapter in her career.
Her predecessor Charlie McCreevy also came to Brussels to escape a slide in popularity back home after serving as finance minister.
Like Hogan, McCreevy was a political bruiser with a reputation for plain-speaking. As commissioner for the single market and financial services, his laissez-faire liberalism was discredited by the financial crisis. But media criticism never stopped him from preferring to go to the annual Cheltenham race meeting rather than attend the European Parliament or an EU economic summit — even during an economic crisis.
European Commissioner for Trade Phil Hogan | Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images
Compared with McCreevy’s devil-may-care attitude, the apology Hogan issued on Sunday in response to “golfgate” looked positively emollient. Although Hogan tried to excuse himself by blaming the event organizers for not complying with the prevailing rules, he did not dispute that the rules were broken.
As an experienced political campaigner, Hogan will know why the incident has sparked such outrage in Ireland — and it’s not just about the immediate context of COVID-19.
Both party leaders — Varadkar most obviously, but Martin as well — have modernized their parties in a bid to assure the electorate that they have abandoned the old (mostly male) ways of doing politics, in which sport, politics and business were intermingled and there was little demarcation between the council chamber, the sports club bar and the company boardroom.
One of the marvels of modern Irish politics has been the persistence of cronyism and corruption in public life, despite lively media and an excellent civil service.
Bertie Ahern, although arguably the country’s most successful post-war prime minister, was obliged to step down as government leader in 2008 and then resign from Fianna Fáil altogether in 2012 as a tribunal of inquiry exposed how he had received money from developers.
The same tribunal showed that Pádraig Flynn, who was Ireland’s European commissioner from 1993 to 1999, had in his earlier ministerial career “wrongly and corruptly” sought payments from property developers and had personally appropriated at least one of the donations. Only in 2012, some 13 years after the accusations against him had first surfaced, did Flynn resign from the party.
Those are the ghosts that Martin and Varadkar must lay to rest. And that is why Hogan may be held to higher standards of behavior than his predecessors. But it is also why Hogan will consider that — relative to his predecessors — he has every right to stay put.