FINANCIAL TIMES: No super-president needed

THE European Union (EU) is not a super-state, nor is it going to become one in the foreseeable future. So it does not need a super-president.

It needs a super-chair: someone who will co-ordinate the agenda, bang heads together to forge agreements and then argue the EU case on the world stage.

It does not require a party political foreign minister like a traditional nation state, either.

It needs an outstanding diplomat, with a strategic view, who can negotiate and conduct a common foreign policy for all 27 member states.

The EU leaders will meet this week to decide on those two jobs: a “president” for the European Council, and a powerful diplomatic “high representative”.

Yet the 27 are limiting the choice.

The future president, they say, must come from the ranks of centre-right present or former heads of government. The “high representative” must be from the political centre-left, according to a tacit understanding with the European Parliament.

Such unwritten rules unwisely and unnecessarily limit the gene pool.

As far as both jobs are concerned, they would exclude some outstanding candidates.

Such self-limiting ordinances are self-defeating. London, November 16.