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LONDON – The European Union wants to become a more influential and higher-profile alliance, but its leaders picked two relative unknowns Thursday to represent the continent on the international stage.
Herman Van Rompuy, the prime minister of Belgium, is to become the EU’s first full-time president Jan. 1, filling a post aimed at helping strengthen and streamline the alliance.
Known as an effective mediator and a composer of haiku, including a widely circulated poem on hair loss, Van Rompuy will move from one office to another in Brussels, the seat of both the Belgian government and EU headquarters.
Catherine Ashton, a Briton who is the EU’s trade commissioner, was chosen as the bloc’s new foreign minister, the No. 2 job. Her appointment was seen as a concession to Britain, which had lobbied unsuccessfully for former Prime Minister Tony Blair to be named president.
The unanimous choices came after just a couple of hours of discussion by the leaders of the 27 EU member nations at a dinner meeting in Brussels.
Support for the two winners apparently crystallized quickly as acceptable compromises to EU leaders balancing demands of big countries versus small, east versus west and left wing versus right wing while also keeping gender balance in mind.
But the choice of two people so little known outside their own countries – and, in the case of Ashton, even within it – raised questions of how the EU expects to boost its profile on the world stage.
By picking Van Rompuy, European leaders signaled a desire more for someone to manage their meetings effectively than for a heavy hitter, like Blair, with an international reputation who could overshadow them.
Van Rompuy, 62, has served as Belgium’s premier for less than a year but has earned a reputation as a consensus builder. His term as president of the European Council, the body comprising all 27 EU country leaders, is to last 2 1/2 years.
