Blair out as EU inches towards Lisbon and leadership deals (Roundup)

Oct 29, 2009, 19:28 GMT

   Brussels - European Union leaders Thursday inched closer to deciding who should be the bloc's first president, but remained at odds over how to bring the Lisbon Treaty into force.

During pre-summit talks in Brussels, Europe's main political groupings decided on a share-out of the bloc's top jobs which effectively ended any chance of Tony Blair becoming the first president of Europe.

And national leaders became embattled as they tried to offer the Czech president, the last obstacle to the Lisbon Treaty, an opt-out from key human-rights clauses which would not offend the Czech Republic's neighbours.

'When we offered the Czechs something they could accept, the Slovaks rejected it. When we offered something the Slovaks could live with, the Hungarians rejected it,' one diplomat close to the talks told the German Press Agency dpa.

Ahead of the summit, officials said that leaders would spend the bulk of their time discussing the economy and pushing for an EU deal on how to fund the fight against climate change.

'This is the time to formulate a financial strategy so that we can engage in discussions with developing countries. This is the main issue (of the summit),' Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who chaired the meeting, said.

   But two other issues threatened to throw a spanner into the summit's works.

   The first was posed by some of the leaders' insistence on holding unofficial talks on who should become European Council President, one of two key post created by the EU's reforming Lisbon Treaty and designed to give the bloc a stronger voice on the world stage.

   Speaking ahead of the meeting, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he considered Blair, his predecessor in government, 'an excellent candidate and an excellent person to hold the job of president of the council.'

But other socialist and conservative leaders indicated that they had agreed that a conservative should be Europe's first president, while a socialist should be its first foreign minister - effectively shutting Blair out of the race.

'We socialists aspire to the post of high representative,' Spanish premier Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero said at a separate pre-summit meeting of European socialist leaders. Other socialists referred to Blair's support of the Iraq war of 2003 as one of the reasons for their opposition.

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek also weighed in the discussions by saying a woman should take the top job if Lisbon comes into force.

'There are a number of suitable women candidates, and I urge the (summit) to consider this,' he said.

Diplomats said that leaders were expected to re-convene on November 12 or 19 to discuss names.

The need for an extraordinary summit emerged after the Czech Republic's constitutional court postponed a ruling on a challenge to the treaty to Tuesday.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said he will only sign the treaty into law if the court allows it and if the EU leaves his country out of the treaty's charter of basic rights.

Klaus fears that the charter could undermine the Benes Decrees, which led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Germans and Hungarians from his country after World War II.

The EU said it was willing to offer the Czech Republic an opt-out from the charter, but Slovak premier Robert Fico insisted that he would only approve the deal if the EU also gave his country written assurances that the charter would not undermine the Benes decrees.

That, in turn, outraged Germany, Austria and Hungary, who saw any attempt to refer to the decrees as an insult. Officials in Brussels further noted that the charter cannot be applied retroactively.

The Czech request 'has launched a debate on very painful questions of historical events and historical victims. It's harder than just debating one paragraph in the (summit) conclusions,' Reinfeldt said.

   Meanwhile, the main obstacle to a deal on climate funding ahead of December talks in Copenhagen was a row pitting Eastern and Western member states against each other over the question of who should pay to help the world's poorer nations cope with climate change.

   'The European Union will make clear that we want an ambitious climate deal in Copenhagen. However this also requires the US and large developing countries to make commitments,' said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.