Word: european
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...choice prompted accusations that the E.U. had gone for the lowest common denominator. Van Rompuy was "bland" and Aston "unremarkable," said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German Member of the European Parliament who heads the Green group in that body. "E.U. leaders have continued the job of weakening the E.U. institutions," he said. "Europe is sinking...
...Rompuy recognized that the wider European public sees him as an unknown quantity, and he addressed it head-on after the summit. "There has been a great deal of talk and comment about the future profile and image of the President of the Council," he said. "But the key things are dialogue, unity and action: the image of the Council resides in strength through results...
...Rompuy's career has been mainly that of a behind-the-scenes fixer in Belgian politics. And he emphasized that his position was not that of chief executive but, as President of the European Council, the body that gathers the E.U.'s leaders for summits, he is more of a chairman, whose role is to mediate across the E.U. "My personal opinion is totally subservient to the Council," he said. "It doesn't matter what I think. My role is to find a consensus...
There was more to the choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton than their individual qualities. In the classic European tradition of horse-trading, the E.U. tried to balance out the top jobs according to political background, geography and gender. Indeed, the Lisbon Treaty states that the two jobs - and that of the European Commission President - have to take account of "the geographical and demographic diversity of the Union...
...Rompuy is a Christian Democrat, from the family of center-right parties that dominate European governments and the European Parliament. The President of the Commission, Portugal's José Manuel Barroso, is also from the center right. Ashton was a dark horse, but she was seen as a consolation prize for Britain's center-left Prime Minister Gordon Brown, after his attempt to secure the presidency for Blair was rebuffed. For E.U. leaders struggling to meet the criteria - a task that one official likened to "three-dimensional chess" - they could at least claim that the Van Rompuy-Ashton...