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Brown says Blair only British candidate for EU job
“Britain has only one candidate for the European Council positions that are being discussed at the moment. That candidate is Tony Blair and his candidature is for the presidency of the council,” Brown told a news conference. “These matters will be sorted out in the next few days.”
Miliband was never a candidate for the high representative job, Brown added.
After emerging as a front-runner for the foreign affairs role, Miliband, 44, has distanced himself from the post and supporters say he wants to focus on his career in Britain.
His name often crops up on lists of possible future leaders of Brown’s center-left Labour Party and he was briefly linked to a challenge to his leadership last year.
The post of president of the Council of EU leaders is being created under the EU’s Lisbon treaty, designed to make decision-making smoother at the top of a political and trading bloc representing nearly 500 million people.
The foreign affairs post will have greater powers under the treaty, to help the bloc raise its profile. European diplomats say Belgian leader Herman Van Rompuy is ahead of Blair in the race for the job of president. Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, may have lost support from other member states due to his backing for the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his failure to adopt the euro currency.
“Obviously, a person who has been a prime minister is controversial for some people because of the decisions that have been made, but that is the way of politics,” Brown added.
Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, is expected to call a summit this month to confirm the new jobs.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said European Union leaders are likely to meet next week to decide who should take two powerful new EU jobs but no favorites have yet emerged.
Kouchner said he doubted the 27 EU heads of state and government would agree this week, as had seemed possible, on who should become president of the EU Council and the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs.
“Honestly, there are no favorites at the moment,” he told France Inter radio. “France does not have any favorite. We are waiting. There will be a meeting, I think, next week. It should have been at the end of this week, but I don’t believe that will happen.”
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