> constitution does not allow for any public input into
> process
> By Hilary WhiteBRUSSELS, November 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) -
> With hopes
> fading for Tony Blair taking the top European job, the
> Times reports
> that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will make a last-ditch
> appeal for
> his former party leader in Brussels this afternoon when he
> attends a
> meeting of the Party of European Socialists. But a
> German
> diplomat has dropped the biggest hint so far that the
> leaders will
> choose the little known Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van
> Rompuy, as
> the first President of the European Union.Reinhard
> Bettzuege,
> revealed today to the Belgian newspaper, De Morgen, that
> German
> Chancellor Angela Merkel is behind Van Rompuy.Under
> the
> provisions of the Lisbon Treaty, finally ratified by all
> member states
> early this month, the office of President is chosen in
> secret
> negotiations among the leaders. The new constitution of the
> EU does not
> allow for any public input into the process. In a
> deal known to
> have been worked out among leaders split into two political
> camps, the
> socialist government leaders will choose the EU's new
> "High
> Representative" or foreign minister and the group of
> centre-right
> countries, led by France and Germany, would nominate the
> president.
> Not all EU politicians are comfortable with the
> opacity of the
> selection process. Brussels Journal reports that Vaira
> Vike-Freiberga, a
> Latvian candidate for the presidency said the search is
> being conducted
> with Soviet-style secrecy and contempt for the public. The
> EU, she says,
> should "stop working like the former Soviet Union ...
> in darkness
> and behind closed doors".The Daily
> Telegraph quotes an
> unnamed Eastern European official complaining, "Trying
> to work out
> who is going to be President of the EU Council is not
> dissimilar to
> decoding who was in or out in the Kremlin in the 1970s.
> "It
> seems strange to many of us that 20 years after the fall of
> the Berlin
> Wall we have to dust off our Kremlinology skills here in
> Brussels."Van Rompuy has kept a low profile in
> international
> politics, but is known to oppose the inclusion of Turkey
> into the EU on
> the grounds that the country does not share Europe's
> Christian
> philosophical and political heritage. "An
> expansion of the
> EU to include Turkey cannot be considered as just another
> expansion as
> in the past. The universal values which are in force in
> Europe, and
> which are also fundamental values of Christianity, will
> lose vigour with
> the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey,"
> he said in
> 2004.
>
>
>
> Update to
> report: The BBC
> reported later Thursday that Van Rompuy has been chosen
> as the
> president and the new foreign affairs chief is EU Trade
| Posted: at | |
ngfineface
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