US embassy cable - 04BRUSSELS3230

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BRUSSELS 003230 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
DEPT FOR EUR/ERA, EUR/RPM 
 
E.O.: 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PINR, EUN, USEU BRUSSELS 
SUBJECT: JOSEP BORRELL ELECTED EP PRESIDENT 
 
 
1. (U) Summary:  The European Parliament (EP) on 
July 20 elected as its new president Spanish 
Socialist Josep Borrell.  Although a former 
Fullbright scholar and active supporter of the 
Fullbright program, Borrell has been one of the 
Spanish Socialist party's most outspoken critics of 
U.S. policy, particularly on Iraq.  End Summary. 
 
JOSEP BORRELL 
-------------- 
 
2. (U) On July 20, at the first plenary session 
after the June European elections, MEPs elected 
Josep Borrell the new EP President.  Borrell, a 57 
year-old Spanish Catalan, is a newly elected 
Socialist MEP with little prior experience in 
international politics.  He won the EP presidency 
with 388 votes, against 208 votes for Polish liberal 
Bronislaw Geremek (candidate of the Liberal and 
Democrats' ALDE group and the Greens) and 51 votes 
for French communist Francis Wurtz (candidate of the 
far-left GUE-NGL group.) 
 
3. (SBU) Borrell was born in 1947 in the Pyrenees 
mountains, the son of a baker.  He holds a degree in 
Aeronautic Engineering and a Doctorate in Economic 
Sciences.  According to biographical notes from the 
U.S. Embassy in Madrid, from 1973 to 1975 he studied 
at Stanford under a Fulbright grant, obtaining a 
Master's in Applied Mathematics-Econometrics.  He 
also received a Master's in Energy Economics from 
the French Petroleum Institute in Paris.  At around 
this time, he also went to Israel, attracted by the 
"kibbutz" experience; he met his wife, Carolina 
Mayeur, during his stay.  The couple, who separated 
in the mid-1990s, has two children. 
 
4.  (U) Borrell began his political career in 1979 
when he was elected to Madrid's regional government 
and given responsibilities in the area of fiscal 
policy.  In 1982, he was elected General Secretary 
of Budget and Public Spending within Spain's Finance 
Ministry.  Two years later, he was appointed State 
Secretary of Finances.  In 1991, Borrell was 
 
SIPDIS 
appointed Minister of Construction, Transport, and 
Environment, a position he held until 1996.  Borrell 
was tainted late in the game by the scandal that had 
chased former President and Socialist party leader 
Felipe Gonzalez from office.  Borrell's political 
skills won over his party's rank and file, however, 
and he was elected Chairman of the Mixed Commission 
of Congress-Senate for the EU.  He was chosen in 
2002 to represent the Spanish Parliament at the 
Convention that drafted the EU Constitution. 
 
A CONTESTED POLITICAL DEAL 
-------------------------- 
 
6.  (U) Borrell's EP Presidency election was secured 
by a deal between the two largest EP political 
groups, the Christian Democrats (EPP-ED) and the 
Socialists (PES).  Under their agreement, Borrell 
should step down halfway through the five-year 
legislature to make way for an EPP-ED president, 
expected to be the group leader, Hans-Gert 
Poettering.  This "technical deal" to share the 
presidency was strongly criticized by the ALDE and 
Green party but also by the press and even by some 
Socialist and EPP-ED MEPs who voted for Geremek 
against their party line.  Borrell has been 
portrayed in the press as a bureaucratic and weak 
candidate compared to charismatic and highly 
symbolic Bronislaw Geremek, a former leader of 
Solidarnosc trade union in Poland and former Polish 
Foreign Minister.  However, such an arrangement to 
share the presidency is not new:  Irish Liberal Pat 
Cox became president in 2002 thanks to a similar 
deal between his party and the EPP-ED in 1999. 
 
BORRELL AND THE UNITED STATES 
----------------------------- 
 
7. (SBU) As the leader of the Spanish socialist 
delegation in the EP and as a candidate to the EP 
presidency, Borrell has been extremely critical of 
U.S. policy in Iraq and was a leading advocate of 
withdrawing Spanish troops.  During a debate with 
Geremek, he stressed his strong opposition to the 
war in Iraq as a main argument in his favor and 
attacked Geremek for having supported U.S. action. 
In an interview published on July 29 in the Wall 
Street Journal, Borrell called for Europe to 
challenge American dominance, stressing that "Europe 
can not just be an intellectual reserve for the 
American empire."  He also asserted that "we need to 
find a middle ground between force without law and 
law without force, and a pre-emptive war like Iraq 
is force without law."  During his inaugural speech, 
he pointed to the Middle East and the Mediterranean 
basin as top foreign affairs priorities for the EU 
but did not mention transatlantic relations. 
 
8. (SBU) However, on a more positive note, Embassy 
Madrid describes Borrell as a strong supporter of 
the Fulbright program, maintaining relations with 
the Fulbright Commission since his scholarship days. 
In 1994, as Transport and Environment Minister, 
Borrell helped establish a Fulbright program for 
Ministry employees.  A total of 13 grantees 
participated in the program from 1995-1997. 
According to Embassy Madrid, Borrell in 1993 
presented the Crown Prince with an honorary award 
during the Commission's 35th anniversary 
celebrations.  In his remarks, Borrell lauded U.S.- 
Spanish relations, commented favorably on his 
experience with American liberty and democracy as a 
Fulbrighter, and urged both governments to embrace 
the Fulbright program as a model of academic 
excellence and cross-cultural understanding. 
 
(DRAFTED:POL:MVANAVERBEKE) 
 
SAMMIS