The award could not have come at a better time but then the campaigning skills of Pat Cox are legendary. The Munster MEP is fighting another great battle - to be voted President of the European Parliament by 626 MEPs in Strasbourg on January 14th. This week, he was named MEP of the Year by the European Voice and he donated his €5,000, presented at a dinner in Brussels, to Goal's Afghan appeal.
Journalists and opinion leaders across the EU selected 50 candidates and readers chose the winners. Despite the predominance of Eurocrats among readers of the Brussels-published weekly, there were some surprises. Bono was European of the Year, Tony Blair Leader of the Year and Chris Patten Commissioner. The award for Fixer of the Year went to EU foreign policy chief Xavier Solana, the Visionary was Lars von Trier, the Danish film-maker, and the Politician was the anti-Nice MEP Jens-Peter Bonde. The Achiever award went to the French anti-globalisation farmer known for his protest against McDonalds, Jose Bove, and the Campaigners of the year were British greengrocers Steve Thoburn and Neil Herron, described as metric martyrs for their stand against compulsory metrication.
Cox is the front runner for the presidency under a deal between his Liberal party and the Christian Democrats of the outgoing president, Nicole Fontaine. Until lately, he was considered a shoe-in but now Scottish Labour MEP David Martin is in the race and things are not so clear. Cox has been engaged in an intensive canvass of member countries, and no better man, but things went slightly awry in Spain.
Earlier this year, El Pais reported that some in the ruling centre-right Partido Popular (PP) will back Martin because Cox "is accused of not having a sufficiently firm position against terrorism". Unlikely as this sounds here, the PP's view is that ETA's terrorism in pursuit of an independent Basque country is purely a police problem. Jose Maria Aznar wants EU support for tough security and judicial measures, and rejects the Irish peace process as a model. Cox's sin, according to El Pais, was to "come out on the side of a formula of negotiation for problems of violence". The paper then added the well-known black mark against Cox - his nationality. Being Irish post-Nice is no longer a guarantee of popularity in Brussels, and the PP recalls that Irish MEPs "hardly lifted a finger" in favour of the Nice Treaty campaign.