EU juggling

The Lisbon treaty, which comes into force next month, creates a number of top jobs in the European Union. But it's proving hard to achieve a political consensus over what sort of personalities are needed to boost the EU's profile on the world stage.

A special summit on Thursday is to decide who should fill the key posts, but no clear favorites have emerged.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency and who is in charge of filling the posts, said he was battling to get the bloc's 26 other leaders to agree unanimously and wanted assistance.

"I don't know if you've tried to do this but try to get in contact with 26 heads of state or government in 24 hours and good luck," Reinfeldt told reporters after an EU-Russia summit in Stockholm on Wednesday, revealing some exasperation.

The deadlock has exposed deep divisions within the EU and threatens to undermine the very unity the bloc was hoping to project via the creation of a president and the strengthening of the role of high representative for foreign affairs.

At least Germany and France have agreed to decide together who they will back to become EU president and will likely reach an agreement by the time the meeting begins on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

"Germany and France will reach an agreement together on this issue and not oppose each other," Merkel told a news conference after a meeting of her cabinet in Meseberg, just north of Berlin on Wednesday.

Unseemly wrangling

Most of the public attention so far has been focused on the post of President of the European Council, who will chair the body that represents all 27 national governments and will be the EU's international "face."

But there has also been a lot of interest in the post of the High Representative, who will be the EU's new "foreign minister," supported by a diplomatic service of more than 3,000 personnel. There is less public interest in the post of Secretary-General of the European Council, but whoever receives the post will wield substantial bureaucratic power.

The political wrangling over who should fill the top two posts has been an undignified process, says the European Policy Center's Director of Studies, Antonio Missiroli.

In allocating the different positions, "it is not clear whether the candidate should come from a big or small member state, what kind of personality we want for that kind of job, or what kind of gender or political balance should be achieved," he notes. "It is disgraceful because these people will have to represent the whole of the European Union at the very beginning."

All bets are off

Which names, or permutations of names, are likely to be drawn from the hat has become a favorite guessing game in Brussels over recent months.

Frontrunners for the post of President of the European Council include ‘Haiku Herman', the Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, whose talent for writing short poems has tickled the press. But Van Rompuy's chances are now said to be fading, with one analyst telling Deutsche Welle that he'd "peaked too early."

Diplomats insist there is no agreement, and some member states are believed to want more of a statesman-like figure for the top job. Other frontrunners include Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga, and Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

The problem with going public

Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, has been tasked with sounding out potential candidates - but the country's prime minister Frederik Reinfeldt admitted last week there was an inherent dilemma in getting EU leaders to say in public that they were interested in the job.

He said it was like "sending the signal to the people of your country, 'I'm on my way to another job. On Monday I'm back again and I didn't get it but I still love you.' Sorry, anyone who has been in politics ... knows that that's unrealistic."

But several EU diplomats from different national governments are complaining about the way Reinfeldt has been collecting names - they accuse him of a lack of transparency, but also say he has been insisting on consensus to such an extent that he has been killing nominations before they get put in the hat. That, they say, is what happened to the candidacy of former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Preferably a female socialist

There are also calls for one of the top EU jobs to go to a woman, although there is widespread skepticism as to whether a female candidate who is "up to the job" can be found.

Europe's center-left has also been lobbying for one of its number to get the top foreign policy job of High Representative, who will double up as Vice-President of the European Commission.

The emerging consensus is that since the center-right dominates national politics and has the majority in the European Parliament, the post belongs to the center-left.

Britain skews the debate

But for some the debate has been far too focused on names rather than the jobs themselves.

Missiroli argues this is because the process was derailed early on by the British, who continue to back former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for President.

"The discussion was launched, with a sort of referendum on Tony Blair, and that has scuppered the process," he says. "There has been no specific discussion on the job descriptions, the criteria that should be used were completely set aside, and it became a referendum on the personality of the former British prime minister."

British diplomats still insist Tony Blair should not be ruled out, despite sustained opposition from their EU counterparts who take issue with the former British Prime Minister's record on Iraq.

No European ‘Obama'

Missiroli believes the EU is unlikely to end up with a presidential president. That's not what was called for in the Lisbon treaty. "We are not going to have a European Obama," he says.

Skeptics say the most Europe can hope for is a consensus-builder for president and a foreign minister who has no real common EU foreign policy to implement.

But EU defenders maintain that the EU is about to re-brand itself, and the rest of the world should sit up and take notice.

A deal looks unlikely at the current meeting, and there are rumors in Brussels that it could drag on and the decision will be adjourned until the December EU summit.

Author: Nina Maria Potts, Brussels (bk/Reuters)
Editor: Trinity Hartman