Brussels blog

Could Tony Blair’s shadow candidacy as the first full-time president of the European Union go the same way as Rudy Giuliani’s US presidential bid? Like Rudy, Tony has the name recognition factor and track record in government to be a frontrunner. He is also a figure bigger than his party, appealing across the divide. Blair himself is more popular in some EU countries than his own.

However, they share a chequered past. Giuliani was dogged by allegations from US firefighters that he cut and run on September 11 as mayor of New York. Blair is charged with invading Iraq on false pretences.

And neither has done much campaigning. Giuliani was undone by refusing to press the flesh in small, early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. He waited a month until the first big contest Florida, but found voters had forgotten about him in the meantime.

Blair has certainly not been positioning himself. While he is heading mediation efforts in the Middle East and spoke at a conference of France’s ruling UMP party he is also making speeches in China and working for JP Morgan, the investment bank, to pay the mortgage.

At least Giuliani said he wanted the job. It is not clear Blair does, though he has not ruled himself out.

The big question is what Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, was doing when he backed his buddy.

By floating his name so soon – more than a year before the Lisbon treaty that would create the job is ratified – is he merely a stalking horse for Sarko’s real candidate?

Or was the French president drawing out opposition to any Brit? If Blair is not acceptable, no Brit would be. Hans-Gert Poettering, speaker of the European parliament, on Thursday said it would be difficult to give the job to someone from a country that is not part of the Schengen borderless zone, the single currency and has not adopted the charter of fundamental rights.

“If there is a proposal from a country that has opt-outs it would certainly help that country to get the job if this country decides to opt in,” he said. It is unlikely Gordon Brown would sacrifice what he sees as fundamental British interests just to get his old rival Blair a job.

Poettering’s views are to be taken seriously. He is a senior figure in the pan-European People’s party, the centre-right bloc of which Sarkozy and Angela Merkel of Germany are members. Parliament will also have some say over who gets to occupy the holy trinity of European policymaking created by the Lisbon treaty.

Once (if?) the treaty is ratified by the 27 member states there will be a full-time president of the council, representing them, and a double-hatted foreign “minister” who will serve the council and the Commission, as well as the president of the executive Commission itself.

MEPs will have to approve the foreign minister – called a high representative – as they do all commissioners. Governments have made clear they want that person in place before the June 2009 European elections. If MEPs do not take to them, they will not continue beyond that, says Poettering. “If it is someone we do not like and they are proposed again…we will have a problem,” he said.

There will also have to be political balance. If the centre-right win the elections Jose Manuel Barroso, Commission president, would probably be offered a second term. The council president should then come from the Socialists.

Yet the elections could upset all those calculations. It is too early to speculate, Poettering, said, as there is no job description yet. However, countries looking, like Henry Kissinger, for one number to call in Europe could be disappointed.

“The president of the council should not be the boss of the EU,” he said.