NATO, is Frattini running on his own?

 There are many factors on how the next Secretary General of NATO will be chosen in 2014 and some are in the making. So anything can still happen, even that Franco Frattini’s candidacy, the only one officially proposed at the moment, could turn out favorably.

 At the moment, however no one in Brussels is betting that the former Minister and European Commissioner could occupy this position He is working very hard, is often in the city that houses the headquarters of the Alliance and the European Union but it seems, at the time, a hopeless effort.

His candidacy, made just a year ago by the then Prime Minister Mario Monti, did not start very well. As soon as the first reaction of the members of the alliance was laid down to grant a one-year extension to the current secretary General, Denmark’s Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had asked not to go home at the end of July 2013. The move did not play well in Frattini’s favor, although then he explained that this extension was needed “to build a consensus” around the name of the Italian candidate, who obviously was not there yet.

One year later, more than one diplomat and even some European ministers judges, rule out that Frattini’s candidacy holds any weight, and prefer to concentrate on 2 other names: that of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs – Radosław Sikorski and of the German Minister of Defense – Thomas de Maizière. The Belgian colleague Pieter De Crem is in reserve. But no one is naming Frattini.

 Unfortunately, he explains, even the question of it being the Italians’ turn doesn’t hold up because no organization takes turns “so to speak” and Italy already has, for example, the European Central Bank and the European Antifraud Office OLAF and could have the Presidency of the European Parliament in the next legislature. Nationality therefore is not a guarantee. Obviously it is not an actual limit either.

 But the balance in NATO is geopolitical and coming into focus, Americans come in and the Turks as well, several conditions for the choice must still be established and those that existed a year ago are no longer the same (for the good and the bad). Even the Italian government is not the same anymore and it is possible that interests and priorities have changed.