EU Leaders to Meet Nov. 9, Spurring Speculation on President

EU Leaders to Meet Nov. 9, Spurring Speculation on President

By James G. Neuger
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aeIqrmZdWl.I

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- European Union leaders announced a previously unscheduled meeting during next week’s festivities to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, spurring speculation the EU may pick its first president.

The dinner meeting on Nov. 9 in Berlin comes as Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, currently in charge of the EU’s agenda, tries to broker a deal to fill the posts of president and foreign policy chief. All 27 EU leaders will attend the dinner, which will be hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a German government spokesman said.

“This may be the meeting that breaks the logjam on who becomes president and foreign minister,” Shada Islam, an analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre, said in a telephone interview. “The leaders need to move fast to correct the image that the EU moves at a glacial pace.”

Passage this week of the EU’s new governing treaty shifted debate over the appointments into high gear, with Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy emerging as a compromise candidate for president after former U.K. leader Tony Blair’s chances faded.

Van Rompuy, 62, joined Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, 53, and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, 54, as contenders in the behind-the-scenes campaign for the post, intended to heighten the EU’s global profile.

Reinfeldt will meet the press at 4 p.m. on Nov. 9 in Berlin, the Swedish government said. The leaders’ dinner is at 9:30 p.m., the German government said in a statement.

The role of the president, with a 2 1/2 year-term renewable once, is to “drive forward” the work of EU summits and “facilitate cohesion and consensus,” according to the new treaty.

‘Conciliator’

That job description points to “somebody who’s a conciliator and a mediator,” said Richard Whitman, a European expert at Chatham House in London. “The photo-op side of the job is one which is of second order of significance.”

Blair, 56, the highest-profile candidate, failed to win the backing of socialist allies, such as Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, partly due to his support for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Contenders for EU foreign policy chief include U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband, 44, and Massimo D’Alema, 60, who has served as Italy’s prime and foreign minister.