Congratulations EU?

Nowadays,Brussels is celebrating the signing and ratification of the Lisbon Treaty,which has been long awaited.[1] This treaty simplifies and consolidates the older treaties and also reforms a number of administrative issues related to voting and other aspects. However, most importantly this Treaty introduces a key post which is that of the President of the European Council.[2]

Weeks before the final ratification of the Treaty the media revealed that Toni Blair has a strong interest in becoming the first President of the EU if this post happened to exist. Immediately, Downing Street did not hesitate in providing extensive and full support to the candidate and declared that it serves their national interests. Italy was one of the most enthusiastic and supportive countries to the idea.[3]

Days later President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel met in Paris to discuss this issue and agreed to support Mr. Blair to run for the EU presidency. Although Sarkozy and Merkel withdrew diplomatically from their previous full support to the British candidate, Blair remains one of the strong candidates for the post given the intensive support he is getting from the U.K.[4]

Keeping this overview in mind, some earlier points should be noted to have a full picture of the current scene. On one hand, discussions about Blair’s presidency became more heated in the second half of this year as the Treaty became closer to complete ratification. As shown earlier Blair immediately got the blessings from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy. However, as noted earlier some problems appeared soon after showing their support.
On the other hand, on Tuesday 20 October 2009 Benedict (second half of the year) opened the gates of the Catholic Church to thousands of Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining some of their rituals and traditions. One of the goals of such a proposal was to attain“Christian Unity”.[5] However, few weeks later many Anglican churches were quite suspicious regarding that proposal.[6] Yet, the issue is still underdiscussions and expected to be become clearer by February 2010.[7]

One question remains, why did Benedict make such a proposal to Anglicans and not Orthodox Christians?
Moreover, some interesting observations should be made clear about Blair himself. After he left his post not only he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism but he also started a centre of faith and globalization in the U.S. which reveals a growing religious devotion.
Finally, Sarkozy and Merkel were among others calling upon the EU to include Christianity as the heritage of the Union. In other words, they are trying to assure and stress on the Christian identity of the EU.[8]
After presenting the above many questions arise. Is there any relation between,

• The timing of the Catholic unity proposal and the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty?
• The proposal and choosing Blair for the post?
• The suspicions that grew with regards to the Catholic proposal and the diplomatic withdrawal of France and Germany from backing Blair?

It can be possibly argued that Catholic Toni Blair would serve the interests of the Vatican if he ever becomes the President of the EU. However, this meant that the Church needs to gain more public support to help their candidate. Therefore, for the first time after several centuries of major splitsand conflict between the Anglican and Catholic churches, the latter made such welcoming and generous proposal. If the Catholic Church succeeds in attracting thousands of Anglicans in Europe this will make Catholic Blair more appealing and accepted.
This also explains why the Catholic Church did not make another similar proposal to the Orthodox Church to join them. Is it because there are no major populations of Orthodox in the EU? Given the Christian identity of a number of EU Leaders and due to the presence of several Christian democratic parties in power in several member states, this explains why many leaders such as that of Germany, France, U.K. and Italy immediately supported the proposal.
It should be also noted that the decline in the chances of Blair to become the president of the EU after Germany and France withdrew their full support might more or less be correlated with the preliminary rejection of the Catholic proposal as they occurred on very close dates. In other words, it can be noticed that the acceptance of the idea of Blair’s presidency was on a similar time to the Catholic proposal while the decline of Blair’s chances was also coupled with the decline of the Catholic proposal.

I argue that if the voting of the Anglicans in February 2010 regarding this proposal goes as planned by the Vatican (Anglicans accept joining the Catholic church), Germany and France will support Blair again and he will become the President of the EU. This will mean that the Catholic Church will have direct welcomed access to power over the whole EU after years of marginalization.