Belgian-British duo leads race for EU's top jobs
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Belgium's Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy arrives at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009.
BRUSSELS — Seven socialist prime ministers backed the European Union's trade commissioner to be its new foreign policy chief, moving a Thursday summit closer to breaking a stalemate over two freshly created top EU jobs.
Diplomats said Sweden, the summit's host, was nominating Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy for the job of EU president.
Both nominations still need the backing of all 27 EU leaders, who were huddled behind closed doors without advisers, to agree on the two posts.
The EU is trying to fill two roles meant to increase the EU's influence on global issues like climate change, terrorism and trade amid the rise of China, Brazil and India.
The union must decide before the EU's new reform treaty, which created the two new posts, comes into force in 12 days.
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.
Diplomats said Reinfeldt was putting Van Rompuy forward for the president's job. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were still underway.