BRUSSELS When Henry Kissinger was US secretary of state, he is said to have demanded to know what telephone number he could ring to talk to the then European Economic Community in Brussels. Like most famous utterances, he probably never said it. But the idea that today’s European Union has no single person to talk to in a crisis has become a subject of agonised debate inside the EU. Indeed, it is taken so seriously that the much-disputed and yet-to-be-ratified Lisbon reform treaty created not just one telephone number, but three.
If the treaty finally comes into effect – something that is looking increasingly likely with the Irish expected to reverse their No vote in a second referendum in October – there will be a president of the European Commission, a semi-permanent president of the European Council, and a High Representative for foreign and security policy.
