European Union: Should Tony Blair be president?

We could one day be calling Tony Blair by a new title—president, said Martin Kettle in the London Guardian. The former British prime minister is being increasingly touted as a top prospect to be president of the European Union in 2009. Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated his support for a potential Blair candidacy. But does Blair himself want the job? “The consensus seems to be that he is interested, but not yet committed.” It really depends on how much power the new position would wield. Right now, the E.U. presidency mostly involves chairing dull meetings. But when the new E.U. constitution is ratified, presumably by next year, the presidency could become a strong executive position. “If the president is Europe’s representative in the world, with authority not just to manage but to set the agenda on issues such as European defense and international trade, then Blair would be seriously tempted.”

Blair “is clearly a European personality of major importance,” said Andrea Bonnani in Rome’s La Repubblica. Not since Germany’s Helmut Kohl has a European leader ruled so long or boasted “so much charisma in Europe and in the world at large.” But his fame could actually work against him. Italian and German leaders are reportedly leaning toward a much lesser-known candidate, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker. Juncker’s relative anonymity means that the world could quickly identify him as the symbol of Europe. Blair, by contrast, will always be associated with Britain first.

And for good reason: What has Blair ever done for Europe? asked Edouard Balladur, former prime minister of France, in Paris’ Le Monde. During his decade in power, Blair did nothing to change the way Britain consistently blocked E.U. goals, refusing, for example, to join in the common currency. He doesn’t compare to someone like Kohl, who successfully reunited the two halves of Germany and sacrificed the strong Deutschmark for the sake of European unity. And how could we trust Blair to put Europe’s interests before America’s? This, remember, is the man who “zealously clung to the U.S. side all through the disastrous Iraqi affair,” even though most of Europe—and most of his own country—was against him.

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And many of us still are, said Charles Moore in the London Daily Telegraph. Blair has actually done plenty for Europe—at Britain’s expense. After he was re-elected in 2005, Blair promised he would never give up the rebate that Britain gets from the E.U. But less than a year later he had surrendered it without a protest, and these days, British taxpayers pay the E.U. nearly twice what they used to. It was a transparent ploy to buy the E.U. presidency. Blair had promised not to run for prime minister again, and he was facing unemployment. “So he chose to do the one simple thing that will always make you seem more European—he gave Brussels more money. It was a good investment for his CV, paid for by you and me.”