Why are the Nordic countries so powerless in the EU?

A new European Commission takes office this week. For the first time it will have a female president. The European Central Bank also now has its first female head. But in the decisions on EU senior appointments made last summer one tradition was again maintained: no citizen of the Nordic countries was selected for any of the top jobs.

Denmark has been a member of the EU since 1973, Finland and Sweden since 1995. Their three economies are among the most successful in Europe. Not only does each of them have a level of GDP per head which is larger than Germany’s: they also all score highly on all the key indices of prosperity (literacy, educational attainment, social mobility, innovation, business-friendliness and so on). They have enjoyed long histories of political stability, gender equality (Finland was the first country in Europe where women got the right to vote) and democratic accountability. Their social systems and their standards of public administration are admired throughout the world.

And yet no Dane, Finn or Swede has ever been president of the European Commission or the European Parliament or the European Council, nor the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy nor, in the case of Finland (Denmark and Sweden are not members of the eurozone), president of the European Central Bank. By contrast there have been three commission presidents from Luxembourg in the last four decades (none of them any good); two out of the three council presidents have been Belgian; two out of the four high representatives have been Spanish; and two out of the four ECB presidents have been French.

Nor have any of the EU’s policies been driven by specifically Nordic influence. There have been effective individual commissioners from the Nordic countries: in the outgoing commission, Margrethe Vestager at competition and Cecilia Malmstrom at foreign trade were both highly rated. But it is hard to identify any field in which the EU has developed in a way which specifically reflects Nordic practice or preference.

So why are these three countries so politically invisible in the EU?

One answer is lack of ambition. They haven’t got the top jobs because they have never really fought hard enough for them. There have been individuals from the Nordic countries who have put their names forward, or allowed others to do so on their behalf. Carl Bildt would have dearly liked to be the first high representative in 1999 or the second one in 2009. Paavo Lipponen, who for eight years was a highly successful Finnish prime minister, was tipped for the job of commission president by the Financial Times in 2004. Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s name was mentioned in the same context in 2014. And Alexander Stubb was the rival candidate to Manfred Weber as the spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) for this post for the European People’s Party in 2019.

All three were well qualified and would probably have done the jobs better than the individuals who were in the end chosen. If the EPP had picked Stubb, it would almost certainly have succeeded in getting his candidature through the European Council and would have thus entrenched the spitzenkandidat system—it would have been difficult for President Macron to argue that someone who had been foreign minister, finance minister and prime minister of his country, and who spoke French among his five languages, did not have the administrative qualifications to do the job.

But on no occasion did the Nordic governments really push for their nationals to be chosen. Their attitude seemed to be that if other member states wanted them for the job, that was fine; but that it was not, as far as their own governments were concerned, a major priority.

Partly this is because of the tribal nature of Nordic politics. Government leaders of one political persuasion are reluctant to see a figure from another party secure an influential European job, and thus possibly outshine them in the international political limelight. Partly too it is the lack of Nordic solidarity. Far from welcoming the prospect of someone from a fellow Nordic country achieving prominence in Europe, many Nordic politicians react with jealousy and do their best to stop it. In 2004 Goran Persson, the prime minister of Sweden, refused to support Lipponen, his fellow social democrat and a fluent Swedish speaker, for the commission presidency, preferring in the end a Portuguese.

Another key reason is that Nordic politicians are typically less prone to show deference. For a French president or a German chancellor this is not a welcome trait in a representative of a small country. A commission or council president from Luxembourg or Belgium can be relied upon to take a conventional view of the EU and to be respectful of the leadership role to which France and Germany consider themselves entitled. One from Denmark, Finland or Sweden might not.

It is surprising though that the geographical imbalance in senior EU appointments has gone unchallenged for so long. It is not just that by failing to choose Nordic (and other) nationals the EU has deprived itself of competent candidates. It has also reinforced the image of a Brussels/Luxembourg/Strasbourg bubble, in which the same old voices repeat the same old mantras, and in which fidelity to received orthodoxy is prized over original thought.

The Nordic countries vary in their attitudes to the EU. Norway and Iceland have remained outside it, preferring instead simply to have access to its single market through membership of the European Economic Area. Denmark has opted out of several EU policies, including the euro. Sweden is theoretically committed to joining the euro, but has no current intention of doing so. Finland, because of its experience during and after the Second World War, sees the EU principally as an instrument of security and therefore wants to be part of any inner core within it.

But all of them share a robust view about the primacy of national identities and allegiances. When their politicians talk about Europe they usually do so in measured terms, not in the visionary rhetoric of political unions or European armies. They are prepared to discuss the limits of European integration as well as its opportunities. It is a pity that their realism and their pragmatism can find no place in the senior echelons of the EU’s institutions. A fresh breeze from the north, even if sometimes a chilly one, would do Brussels a lot of good.

Paul Lever is a former British Ambassador to Germany and the author of "Berlin Rules: Europe and the German Way" (IB Tauris)