BELGIAN PRIME Minister Herman Van Rompuy is the latest EU leader to emerge as a front runner for the first full-time presidency of the European Council.
A Christian Democrat who has been in office only since last December, Mr Van Rompuy (62) is said to have come to the fore amid discreet soundings at the EU summit last week.
Mr Van Rompuy has made no comment on his candidacy. However, he recently made an intriguing reference to the newly-created post in a Dutch-language haiku on his personal website, where he routinely posts his musings in three-line Japanese-style verse and recommends books.
Titled EU Presidency Trio, the haiku runs: “three waves roll/ along the harbour/ the trio’s home”. The trio in question is widely held to be the council presidency and the new job as EU foreign policy chief, both created under the Lisbon Treaty, and the presidency of the European Commission.
An elder statesman of the centre-right, Van Rompuy is respected as an intellectual figure with a consensual political style and a solid fiscal record. In his tenure as finance and budget minister in the 1990s, he prepared the ground for Belgium to adopt the euro by gradually reducing its national debt. Against him, however, is the inherent fragility of Belgian politics. He leads a five-party coalition and the last government took nine months to form after inconclusive elections in 2007.
Although he was the third prime minister in less than a year, he is credited with restoring political stability. He is from Belgium’s Dutch-speaking majority and is perceived to have demonstrated a steady hand as government leader.
