Kroes and others plead for female EU president

The first EU president and its foreign minister should be women, three powerful women within the European Union said in a letter printed in the Financial Times on Monday.

"The right man in the right job is often a woman," competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, Commission vice-president Margot Wallström and Diana Wallis, the vice-president of the European parliament, wrote. They said there are plenty of active women who qualify for the top jobs now being filled in Brussels. They hope the EU puts its money where its mouth is and nominates women for president of the European Council and EU high representative for foreign affairs. “It is time to move from words to deeds by appointing women to leading positions in the EU,” the female politicians wrote.

Government leaders of the 27 member states will decide on the appointments at a special summit in Brussels on Thursday. Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands, British Tony Blair and Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker are seen as contenders for the job of permanent president. With David Miliband, the British foreign minister, out of the race for high representative, the former Italian foreign minister Massimo D’Alema is said to be a candidate, as is Olli Rehn, the current enlargement commissioner from Finland. The former prime minister of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga (72), is one of very few women mentioned for the jobs.

In their letter, the politicians endorse Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former president of Latvia, for president and French Elisabeth Guigou or British Catherine Ashton for high representative.

The positions in José Manuel Barroso's European Commission also need to be filled in the coming weeks. Only three of the 20 countries that have announced their representatives so far have appointed women, despite Barroso's ambition for a gender balance. The new Commission is likely have fewer women than the current level of eight out of 25. "This would be bad for Europe, bad for democracy and bad for women," Kroes, Wallis and Wallström wrote.