Guardian.uk: EU Leaders in last-minute attempt to decide top European Council roles
The leaders of Europe's main political tribes conferred in Brussels this afternoon in an attempt to hammer out a last-minute consensus on who should be the top two people running the EU's new Lisbon regime, ahead of a crucial Brussels summit. While Christian democratic government leaders, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, gathered in Brussels, Gordon Brown found himself isolated at a session of the seven centre-left leaders ahead of this evening's summit. The center-left leaders, grouped in the Party of European Socialists (PES), hope to secure the new post of European foreign minister, with Italian Massimo D'Alema and Spain's Miguel Angel Moratinos as their front-runners.Germany's ambassador to Belgium, Reinhard Bettzuege, broke ranks with the policy of silence on the presidency by stating Berlin's support for Van Rompuy. "Chancellor Merkel and her government are behind Van Rompuy for this job," he told a Belgian newspaper, De Morgen.
Note EU-Digest: regardless of the negatives brought up against Van Rompuy, he could turn out to be the "glue" who pastes together the loose ends of the Lisbon Treaty.
