Herman van Rompuy wants second term as strengthend EU president

Telegraph:  Herman van Rompuy is ready to run for a second term as EU president, at the head of a “United States of Europe”
His comments came as Germany further strengthened demands for a new treaty giving the president extra powers.

Mr Van Rompuy has announced he is willing to take on the “unfinished” euro zone debt crisis with new powers setting an “economic government” in Brussels.

“Because the work is not finished, I do not rule out a second mandate,” he yesterday. “I would not do it for personal glory.”

The former Belgian prime minister took up his post as president of the European Council, the regular summits of EU leaders, on a two and a half year term that expires in May 2012.

He is jockeying to have a second go at the job, with an annual salary of £120,000 more than the British prime minister, at the moment when calls for a new European treaty giving the EU president new powers are growing.

Many EU officials and diplomats regard Mr Van Rompuy’s announcement as a bid to put himself at the front of the new campaign for a federal “United States of Europe” with himself as president.

“It is no coincidence that he steps forward at the very moment that federalism is on the agenda again,” said an EU official.

Under German proposals, Mr Van Rompuy, an economist, would become eurozone as well as EU president in control of a powerful secretariat for economic and financial affairs.

Germany is pushing for a plan to create a euro zone economic government, measures that would almost certainly require a new EU treaty, despite the risk of a backlash from European voters angry at euro bailouts and Brussels austerity programmes.

Gerhard Schroeder, the former German Chancellor, told Der Spiegel magazine that the changes would “translate into a United States of Europe”.

He insisted, echoing comments made by Wolfgang Schaueble, the German finance minister last week, that a new EU constitutional treaty to replace Lisbon must be pushed through despite British opposition and the risk of repeat French, Dutch and Irish No votes.

“Lisbon was a compromise. Our original goal was to create a political union with the European constitution, which was defeated in the referendums,” he said.

“Great Britain is causing the biggest problem. Great Britain is not part of the euro, and yet the British always want to have their say in the design of an economic zone. This is inconsistent.”

Mario Draghi, the Italian due to take up the job of president of the European Central Bank in December, yesterday said that the EU’s Lisbon Treaty needed to be changed in the wake of the euro debt crisis.

“Let’s not forget that this crisis started from the incomplete European construction,” he said.

“To cope with this, we must have a treaty change. The aim of this effort should be a quantum leap up in European economic and political integration.”

Within David Cameron’s Conservatives calls are growing for the Prime Minister to demand more national sovereignty in return for allowing a two-speed EU built around a federalist euro zone.

Martin Callanan, the head of the European Tories, said: “It may well be the right thing for the Eurozone countries to pursue fiscal union – and if they wanted to fly a federal banner over that it would be their choice. But the UK should quite rightly reserve the right to renegotiate repatriation of key powers in any such fundamental change to our existing treaties.”

Mats Persson, the director of the Open Europe pressure group, warned that the coalition government risked falling out of step with both European developments and public opinion.

“Cameron needs to develop a positive blueprint for a revised EU-UK relationship  and be prepared to put that to a referendum. Unfortunately, there seems to be no such sense of urgency from no 10 at the moment,” he said.