Said Blair:

For Europe, the crucial thing is to understand that the only way that you will get support for Europe today is not on the basis of a sort of postwar view that the EU is necessary for peace. For my children’s generation, that is just a bizarre argument. They don’t see that as a real threat, that European nations will go to war with each other.

But what they can understand completely is that in a world in particular in which China is going to become the dominant power of the 21st century, it is sensible for Europe to combine together.

For British Labour MP Diane Abbot in the Guardian – “A cold shiver must have passed down many a spine.” Because there can be no doubt, she argues, “which particular bronzed globetrotter he has in mind for the role.”

While no doubt a prospective President Blair “is dreaming of, once again, being at a rostrum side by side with the US president”, he could well have a serious rival. Berlin monthly Cicero is pondering the fate of the German chancellor, pointing out that that as she has little chance of being returned to office in 2013, she has no desire to go down in history as an electoral loser. Seeking a new role, she is now focused on -

... the mighty and prestigious job of the President of the European Council. Bravely and cleverly she battled to have this job filled by a weak personality [in 2009] to be able to say one day: ‘It’s now time for a powerful solution.’ Of course Angela Merkel is thinking of the destiny of Angela Merkel.

At present the EU is headed by the President of the European Council – Belgian Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, neither of whom have been directly elected to office. According to the Daily Telegraph, their personal “feud” as to who is “Europe's true leader” has reached such a point that they have elected to travel to the June 10 EU/Russia summit in separate VIP jets. The cost of Mr Barroso’s Brussels to Russia air-taxi is estimated as between £50,000 to £70,000, the London daily notes.

But maybe these less than flattering epithets merely derive from the fact that Van Rompuy is from a “small” member country, of scant interest to other members’ media and governments, focused as they are on the “majors”: UK, France, Germany…. The Luxembourgian Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch Jan Peter Balkenende, likewise deemed wanting in charisma, also hail from “small” countries. As though the geographic size of a state rubbed off on its highest representative. And the press lost no time in making sardonic remarks about the alleged penury of panache in one “second-tier” personage or another – though they, too, ranked among the frontrunners for the post.

And whilst the Belgians see in Van Rompuy the man who managed to maintain a semblance of national unity, Balkenende and Juncker have kept themselves in power for a long time and still enjoy enviable popularity ratings, even as those of their “big” partners wane. The secret to their success? The art of compromise and consensus. This is precisely the modus operandi that the Union has always opted for in dealing with national vetoes – and that got it where it is today. J.S.