A good candidate? A European Sarah Palin I'd say, but with brains. Vaira has never held an elected office. She is a Canadian professor of linguistics, who briefly held the mostly ceremonial function of president of Latvia.


She may impress the Eurosceptic crowd with her demand that the position of EU chairman/president must be an elected office, an open process, but let's not forget that she herself was not elected president in a transparant election either, but appointed by parliament. As is the case in most European systems.

When's the last time Britain elected a PM? Never, of course, because that would mean a semi-presidential system.



Two things:

- Unless one wants a presidential system, as in France or the US, a president / PM is not directly elected. I find it most peculiar that so many people who dissaprove of a directly elected head of their domestic government, should insist on a direct election of EU offices.

- Again, it is the anti-federalists who dissaprove of a direct election of an EU chairman. As they should, as an anti-federalist. Because an elected EU President has a direct mandate from the electorate. Which places her in a position of direct power against national governments. This means an end to the EU as an organisation of supranational states, and turns the EU into some sort of confederacy.


So: know what you are asking for when demanding an elected EU president. Don't just mewl that the process is undemocratic, while simultaneously demanding that it be thus.