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Finantial Times, 25/06/04
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Date Posted: 00:00:13 06/26/04 Sat
In reply to:
Pedro Santana Lopes
's message, "E esta, hem?" on 21:36:19 06/25/04 Fri
Eis a tão falada notícia do Finantial Times.
Como podem ver as razões para a escolha do Mr. Barroso são as melhores: “É um dos menos conhecidos líderes da EU, mas a sua relativa obscuridade permitiu-lhe emergir como candidato do compromisso”. Extraordinário!
Portugal's PM heads race for top EU job By George Parker in County Clare and Peter Wise in Lisbon Published: June 25 2004 21:01 |
José Manuel Durão Barroso, Portuguese prime minister, was on Friday night considering whether to accept the post of European Commission president, after emerging as the clear frontrunner from a pack of candidates.
Mr Barroso on Friday afternoon met Jorge Sampaio, the Portuguese president, to confer over his political future.
The unassuming prime minister has been identified as the man most likely to win most backing from the EU's 25 leaders when they meet for a special summit to decide the job next Tuesday. He would have a huge task to turn around the fortunes and morale of the European Commission, the EU executive, which has lost some of its authority and direction under the leadership of Romano Prodi and Jacques Santer, his predecessor.
Member states pay lip service to the need for a strong Commission, arguing it is vital to develop new policies, enforce EU rules and to run an efficient bureaucracy, but in practice many resent taking instructions from Brussels.
Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister and holder of the rotating EU presidency, said on Friday night that he believed a successor to Mr Prodi as European Commission chief could be found at the summit. "I'm as confident as I can be," Mr Ahern told RTE television, speaking in County Clare ahead of an EU-US summit. "I've put everyone on notice for a meeting on Tuesday night, and I think we will get agreement."
Mr Barroso is one of the least known of EU leaders, but his relative obscurity has allowed to emerge as a compromise candidate.
Born into a middle-class Lisbon family, he studied law and was a member of the Maoist party after the revolution that toppled a rightist dictatorship in 1974. Six years later, he joined the Social Democratic party - the more conservative of Portugal's two mainstream political parties. On the eve of war in Iraq in March 2003, he hosted a summit on the Azores attended by US President George W. Bush and Britain and Spain, his chief allies.
The key to his appointment is the approval of Jacques Chirac, French president, who had reservations about Mr Barroso's support for the war.
But Mr Ahern spoke to Mr Chirac by telephone last night, and remained confident that the Portuguese prime minister could emerge to take the job.
Britain has indicated it would support the centre-right prime minister, who has a record as a tough economic reformer. In an interview with the FT he described himself as a "a reformer, not a revolutionary. I am a centrist."
Portuguese media said Mr Sampaio was consulting with political leaders on whether the appointment of the Portuguese prime minister to head the Commission would result in an early general election in Portugal or whether Mr Sampaio would be replaced as prime minister without the need for an election.
The race to succeed Mr Prodi, whose five-year term expires in October, has been protracted and messy, with rival power blocs headed by Britain and France blocking or threatening to block proposed candidates.
Earlier this month at an EU summit in Brussels, Britain, Italy and other countries blocked the candidacy of Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian prime minister.
Mr Chirac retaliated by blocking the candidacy of Chris Patten, the British EU external affairs commissioner.
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