According to the Spanish EU Presidency calendar, the next EU-US summit is to be held in Madrid on 24-25 May. However, according to Spanish daily ABC, Washington has discreetly conveyed the message that it would prefer Brussels to be the venue.
According to the daily, which is close to the Spanish centre-right opposition, the USA wants to signal that President Barack Obama considers EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to be his main interlocutors.
Other unnamed diplomatic sources cited by the daily said it was in fact Van Rompuy who thought the summit should be held in Brussels, to convey the message that it was him, not Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who was leading the Union.
Sources close to Van Rompuy reportedly dismissed such statements and commented that the Council president had "many summits" ahead of him, including after the Spanish Presidency, at which to assert his institutional role.
According to ABC, it has already been agreed that after the Spanish Presidency, all of the Union's bilateral summits will be held in Brussels. The Spanish Presidency appears to be an exception because Madrid had started to prepare for its term at the EU helm well before the Lisbon Treaty entered into force on 1 December 2009.
Zapatero is conscious of the fact that even if the summit takes place in Madrid, he should put Van Rompuy in the driver's seat. But he would still be there for the photo opportunity in his capacity as host, while he would not attend summits outside Spain, the daily writes further.
The Spanish prime minister has an opportunity to lobby for Madrid to be the venue when he meets Obama in Washington on 4 February at a National Prayer Breakfast. A visit by Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, to the White House on 17 February could also contribute to achieving this goal, ABC writes.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister, vowed last December that his country would take a backseat role as EU president (EurActiv 19/12/10).
Spanish Presidency spokesperson Cristina Gallach dismissed the ABC article as "speculation". "The summit will be held in Madrid," she said.
Herman Van Rompuy's spokesperson Dirk De Backer told EurActiv that in future, according to the Lisbon Treaty, all EU summits with third countries will be presided over and prepared by the Council president. This implies that they will be held in Brussels, he said.
But as the Spanish Presidency marks a transitional period, De Backer added that Madrid had proposed to Washington that the summit be held in the Spanish capital.
"We don't know what the US reaction is," he said.
