Top EU jobs up for grabs Nov19

Top EU jobs up for grabs Nov 19

By Zhang Wen

Days after the passing of the landmark Lisbon treaty, the Swedish presidency of the EU has called a dinner summit November 19 to try to reach agreement on the appointment of the bloc's three new top posts.

The three positions in question are the new president of the European Council and the EU foreign relations chief, as well as the largely bureaucratic appointment of a new secretary-general.

"It will be a significant moment in the history of the EU, which means it has transformed from a pure trade union 50 years ago to today's political and economic community," said Feng Zhongpin, a researcher from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Early favorites for the president's job, former British prime minister Tony Blair and Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, have almost fallen by the wayside.

Instead, gossip now favors Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy for the presidency post and British foreign minister David Miliband for the foreign relations chief. However, Miliband's denials and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's support for Blair may make the race remain open on the foreign relations side.

EU officials say there appears to be an overwhelming consensus that the EU's first president should be "a chairman, rather than a president," someone self-effacing and good at finding compromises.

"Van Rompuy is a good candidate," Thomas de Wever, a Belgian resident in Beijing, told the Global Times Wednesday, adding Rompuy had quietly but quickly negotiated a truce in the debilitating stand-off between Belgium's two language communities that threatened to pull the country in half.

Piotr Kaczynski, an analyst at the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies, said that current plans to opt for a relatively weak, small-country president and a stronger, large-country foreign minister fit well into the EU's institutional logic, where member-state sovereignty is checked by a supranational European Commission.

"It is a milestone for Europe, but also could be a headache," said Gong Yu, a Political Science scholar at Leiden University. "The incumbents need to get along and work together to make this union work. Members should also respect the president."

Agencies contributed to this story