Amid anger, the EU’s big countries will pick its new no-name president

While Poland has demanded that the European Union’s smaller countries have a say in who will be its first de facto President under the recently-ratified Lisbon Treaty, the leaders of the bloc’s major countries are set to make the decision on November 19, sources told Deutsche-Presse-Agentur (dpa,) with two of the EU’s lesser known names the front runners for the job. By then, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who is coordinating the negotiations, plans to have ended consultations with the EU member states - enabling the EU leaders to fill two new high-profile EU posts. The EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which creates the positions of president and foreign policy chief, is expected to come into force on December 1. National leaders are currently debating who should get the jobs. According to diplomats in Brussels, the prime ministers of Belgium and the Netherlands, Herman Van Rompuy and Jan Peter Balkenende, are front-runners to claim the post of EU president, both said to be favored because they are consensus seekers who will not rock the political boats in the 27-member bloc. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, the only celebrity name on the list, was said to have been making a flurry of last-minute phone calls to EU leaders trying to resurrect his candidacy after it was said to have fallen apart after criticism he supported the war in Iraq on thin evidence and was a Euroskeptic.  Meanwhile British Premier Gordon Brown denied that his foreign minister, David Miliband, was a candidate for the foreign policy role and Miliband said he wouldn’t take the job, which means the leading contender for the post is believed to be former Italian prime minister Massimo D’Alema, whose ties to Italy’s Communist party have irked leaders of EU countries that were former Soviet Republics – who said they already feel shut out of the decision-making process for both jobs. Austrian daily Der Standard reported that Miliband had refused an offer of the job from the EU’s top socialist, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, one of the key negotiators on the issue.
Anyone who wants to become the president of the European Union should first face an interview with the bloc’s national leaders, Polish diplomats said after reports that small cliques of powerful member states are trying to agree on candidates ahead of the formal decision and make it a foregone conclusion without consulting the EU’s smaller states. Poland is therefore proposing “that the election of the future president of the (EU) Council is preceded by a discussion ... during which the candidates would present their vision of how their tasks would be conducted,” according to a paper circulated among member states.
That interview would be carried out by national leaders, whose task it is to appoint the new EU chief. Similarly, heads of government and foreign ministers should conduct a joint interview of the candidates for the post of EU foreign representative, the paper said. Reinfeldt denied the fix was in and said that, “I will start with a blank piece of paper and I will ask the elected governments what they think and take it from there ... It is not always certain that those mentioned in the speculation will be the final ones on my blank piece of paper.”
The Latvian government has formally nominated the country’s former president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, as a candidate for the EU Presidency, officials in Brussels confirmed. But analysts said that Vike-Freiberga will face an uphill struggle to convince other European leaders to back her for the EU’s new top job, as her country is in deep financial trouble and has little influence within the EU. “I hereby propose Her Excellency Dr Vaira Vike-Freiberga ... a charismatic and powerful political thinker and a gifted multilingual orator who can unite and inspire nations,” Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis wrote to EU counterparts. Vike-Freiberga was born in Latvia, but fled the country in 1944 when the Red Army invaded, growing up in refugee camps in Germany and Algeria before moving to Canada. “Vaira Vike-Freiberga could become the symbol of a reunited Europe,” Dombrovskis wrote. Vike-Freiberga was Latvia’s head of state, a largely ceremonial role, when the bloc joined the EU and NATO in 2004.
A skilled diplomat and linguist, she quickly gained respect among Western leaders, with then US president George W Bush dubbing her The Iron Lady of the Baltics. Her international fame peaked in 2005-06, when she was named UN Special Envoy on reforming the institution, and subsequently ran for the post of UN Secretary General, coming in at a better-than- expected third in the vote count.  Since then, she has served as vice-president on the EU’s internal think tank, the Reflection Group on the Future of the EU.
However, analysts say that she lacks powerful backers who would allow her to overcome the challenge of Van Rompuy and Jan-Peter Balkenende, because she does not belong to a political party. Latvia is not a member of the Eurozone either and its economy is in deep recession and some politicians in Riga argued that her bid for the top job could weaken the chances for the country’s EU Commissioner for Energy, Andris Piebalgs, to win a powerful portfolio when the new EU executive is appointed later this year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at a dinner, giving them a rare chance to discuss names face to face. It was reported that the Big Three, along with Reinfeldt, would make the decision between them and have the most influence in selecting the EU’s President.
“The two (positions) are linked: everyone understands that we need to balance big and small (countries), right and left, north and south,” Reinfeldt said. It was also reported that the EU’s new President would be a Conservative and that the second-biggest party, the Socialists, would get the EU’s new de facto Foreign Minister job.