The Monkey Cage

By process of elimination I’m going for answer A. I know it isn’t B, D sounds too unlikely and C has too little general interest to be quiz material.

Euronews TV channel has a quick and short article about him: http://www.euronews.net/2009/11/19/why-van-rompuy-is-eu-president/

Answer E, none of the above.

Van Rompuy is the newest President of the European Council.

You may think I’m just being pedantic, but it is important as there are so many other positions who could be labelled the President of Europe. Off the top of my head:

*President of the Council of the European Union
*President of the European Parliament
*President of the European Commission
*President of the Council of Europe

I’m sure there’s more. And yes, I know all those positions are stupid to have such similar names, but I didn’t choose them.

But there’s been a trend in the media (at least in the UK) to call him the new “President of the EU”, but this is wrong for two reasons:

1. There’s no such position, as demonstrated above, and calling him that only feeds into the europhobe paranoia over here which will start to think we’ll have someone like the US President, when Rompuy will just be a Chairman.

2. It’s not a new position either. The position already exists, what’s different now is that instead of it being for 6 months, it’s for 2.5 years, with the chance of a second term, and instead of it being a rotating position between the 27 members states, it is now chosen by directly by the 27 heads of government of the member states.

Okay, rant over.