According to diplomatic sources, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is throwing his weight behind his predecessor Tony Blair's bid to take the top seat of the Union. As part of this strategy, a landmark speech by UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband pronounced on Monday (EurActiv 27/10/09) was seen as conveying the message that Europe needs a world-famous face and name to represent the Union in international affairs. According to opinion polls, Blair's lead in terms of international popularity is unassailable (EurActiv 07/04/09).
However, Blair's unannounced bid already faces complications, as the much-respected prime minister of one of the smallest EU countries, Luxembourg premier Jean-Claude Juncker, said he was interested in the position.
"If I were called upon, I would have no reason to refuse [...] on condition that there are ambitious ideas for the post," said Juncker, quoted by Le Monde.
Juncker, who also heads up the Eurogroup of 16 EU finance ministers, said he did not oppose Blair, but considered that the EU president should come from a country at the heart of Europe.
As a Benelux common position, Luxembourg, together with Belgium and the Netherlands, is insisting that a British candidate is unacceptable, as the country is neither a member of the euro zone nor of the Schengen area (EurActiv 13/10/09). Former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, now a member of the European Parliament, also said recently that he sees Blair's candidacy as unacceptable, because he was an advocate of the Bush administration's failed policies in Iraq.
However, Juncker is seen by many as 'too federalist' and would not easily attract a consensus either. Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, threw down the gauntlet by saying that the choice of future president should be "unanimous and the result of consensus" among the 27 EU member states – a difficult task, implying horse-trading and probably a political counter-balance with the High Representative for Foreign Policy.
Frattini acknowledged that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had spoken in favour of Blair's candidacy some time ago, but added that the picture was now different with the entry into the fray of Juncker and probably Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende.
EurActiv was the first to report about Balkenende's subtle lobbying campaign (EurActiv 29/09/09), which was confirmed by various sources. However, the Dutch prime minister has not made his move so far.
A fully-fledged discussion over top jobs at the summit would, however, be hampered by the fact that the Czech Constitutional Court, which met yesterday to rule on the last challenge to the Lisbon Treaty by a group of Eurosceptic senators, postponed its decision until 3 November. "Only when we have legal clarity about the [Lisbon] Treaty can we decide about the new top posts in the EU," said Sweden's minister for European affairs, Cecilia Malmstrom, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
