Commission appoints Barnier as Chief Brexit Negotiator

The European Commission has appointed French career politician Michel Barnier, a former Minister of France and two times European Commissioner, as the Commission’s chief negotiator with the UK over the Brexit. 

Barnier’s appointment has drawn criticism from several quarters, with one analyst noting, that this is the Commission’s first decision since the Brexit vote, and it is a bad one. Although an experienced politician, who was first elected Member of the French parliament aged 27 in 1978, Barnier is also known as mono-linguist with a limited working knowledge of English.

From 2010 to 2014 Barnier was European Commissioner for the Internal Market and in that position went into frequent battles with the UK concerning European banking legislation. Ironically, he was succeeded as Commissioner responsible for Financial Services by Englishman Jonathan Hill, who later became one of the first casualties of the Brexit vote, as he resigned his position as Commissioner on June 25, 2016, just two days after the referendum.

The appointment of Barnier as Director-General responsible for the Brexit negotiations also adds somewhat to the confusion over who is actually heading the negotiations with the UK, as the Council of Ministers have already appointed their own man for the job, Belgian diplomat Didier Seeuws, a former Head of Cabinet for the former President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. This brings to light a lingering power struggle between the member states and the Commission over who has the right to approve and negotiate the status of various countries in relation to the EU – the member states, who could be said to constitute the EU, or the Commission as the independent “government” of the EU.

Martin Selmayr, the Head of the Cabinet of the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, was reported to have dismissed Seeuws’ appointment as a “power grab” by the European Council, describing it as “a ridiculous move.”

Cover photo of Michel Barnier released under a CC BY 2.0 license by the European People’s Party.