Who will be President?

On Tuesday the Independent dedicated a page to the issue of the future President of the European Council, who is favourite for the job and what exactly they will have to do, should the treaty be ratified.

Tony Blair has of course been touted for the job, and is supposedly being backed for the role by Sarkozy, but I think it remains a bit of a longshot. First, would Blair be popular enough to win support Europe wide and second, would he want to do a job which involves, as the John Lichfield explains, "not an enormous amount"?

The job is not President of the EU, but simply the chairmanship of just one of its institutions - the one that only meets four times a year, namely the European Council of heads of government of the Member States. The job has no independent executive powers or own administration. The EU's executive remains the Commission, whose President will be elected by the European Parliament.

Indeed, the relationship between these two Presidents could be problematic if the European Council President has too high ambitions and seeks to develop the role beyond its original conception of preparing and managing the "summit" meetings. It may also be confusing for the wider public if Europe has two "presidents" with an ill-defined division of responsibilities.

Some have suggested that the two posts should be merged or at least given to the same person. This is unlikely in the immediate, but I have a solution: the current Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is interested in being President of the European Council. His predecessor, Paul Nyrup Rasmussen, now leader of the Party of European Socialists, has been tipped as a suitable President of the Commission. Appoint both - then, for public opinion, the "President of Europe" would be a Dane called Rasmussen. He might look different from one photo to another, but what the heck, you age quickly in this job....