The manner of Herman Van Rompuy’s departure from office will be of a piece with his five-year tenure of the presidency of the European Council: low-key and understated. It is not his style to hog the limelight, nor to seek to upstage his successor. Van Rompuy has been consistently underestimated and undervalued, and that will remain his fate.
Nevertheless, the European Union has good reason to be grateful to Van Rompuy for his stewardship. He was the first holder of the office of Council president, which was an invention of the Lisbon treaty, and he has shaped and defined it. The …read more
Source: European Voice
