Indigestion at dinner: EU leaders deadlocked over new EU president, foreign policy chief

EU leaders deadlocked over top 2 EU jobs

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s 27 leaders were facing an all-nighter Thursday as a bruising battle loomed over naming the bloc’s first full-time president and new foreign policy chief.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, chairman of the EU summit, said despite his best efforts at mediation, the EU leaders were deadlocked before Thursday night’s dinner to decide who will represent the European Union to the world.

Reinfeldt told reporters in Stockholm that “it might take all night” to get all the leaders to agree on two names, and added that the list of candidates he has drafted is far too long.

“We are not of the same opinion,” said Reinfeldt.

He is overseeing a momentous task, a meeting of 27 disparate EU members trying to name continentwide bosses before the EU’s new reform treaty comes into force in less than two weeks, on Dec. 1. The two posts, created by the treaty, are meant to increase the EU’s influence amid the rise of China, Brazil and India, and handle global issues like climate change, terrorism and trade.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to show her cards when she arrived in Brussels for the meeting.

“We of course want to have a very eligible candidate, but there must also be a wide consensus in the European Union,” she told reporters, without naming any names.

No publicly floated candidates so far are from Germany or France, the traditional motors of the EU.

The EU leaders are trying to strike the right balance between big countries and small, rich and poor, east and west, socialists and conservatives. Lawmakers and protesters have already questioned why only one woman — former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga — is being considered so far.

Vike-Freiberga told The Associated Press before the decision Thursday that the way leaders dole out important jobs behind closed doors has to change.

“In my country, people found it strange, they said how does this work? Is it true that the prime minister alone is responsible, what about the rest of us, don’t we have a say?” Vike-Freiberga said.

Belgium’s little-known Premier Herman Van Rompuy leads the pack of a half-dozen politicians said to be interested in the presidential post.

Before the summit, Van Rompuy met with Belgium’s King Albert to discuss the possible selection of his successor as premier. “I undergo all of this with mixed feelings,” he told reporters, adding he has a job and therefore “I am not leaving (Thursday’s summit) as a loser.”

Britain opposes Van Rompuy and is pushing hard for its former prime minister Tony Blair to get the job, saying Europe needs a high-profile president.

Others like France and Spain, fearing Blair would overshadow them, favor a low-profile person, one limited to chairing summits and greeting foreign dignitaries.

Smaller EU nations loathe the idea of being led by Blair, whose strong support for the Iraq war angered many Europeans. They also want a president from a country that uses the EU’s common euro currency and participates in its passport-free travel zone. Britain has opted out of those EU projects.

Other possibilities for president include Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker and Estonian President Toomas Ilves.

Vike-Freiberga said if a woman was not named to one of the two posts it would be “a disappointment” for those fighting for gender equality.

“There is actually scientific, pragmatic, factual proof that having women in these high positions improves the functioning of bodies and organizations,” she told The AP.

The EU reform treaty does not spell out what the EU president’s job really is. The original idea was that a European president would give the EU a bigger profile on the world stage, one commensurate with its economic heft.

But power seems to have shifted toward the EU’s new foreign minister, who will get a say over the bloc’s annual euro7 billion ($10.5 billion) foreign aid budget and a new 5,000-strong EU diplomatic corps.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband had been cited as a possible candidate for the foreign policy post, but he says he does not want it. Other names floated for the job are Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and Massimo d’Alema, an former Italian foreign minister whose communist past has raised concerns among some eastern EU members.

Socialist leaders from around Europe, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, met before the dinner to try for a common strategy for the top jobs.

The EU has a long history of horse-trading for plum jobs. In 1994, leaders took 12 hours and a veto by Britain to pick an European Commission president. In 1998, it took another 12 hours to choose the first European Central Bank chief — and the EU ended up splitting the term between two people.

Associated Press writers Robert Wielaard and Aoife White in Brussels contributed to this report.