Russia to top agenda at EU summit

Russia will be the main focus of an extraordinary summit of EU leaders in Brussels today and is likely to play a role in who gets the Union’s top jobs for the coming five years.

The situation in Ukraine is rapidly becoming an emergency issue especially with Kiev’s push to join Nato — which the EU leaders will hear about from Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko. His prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he wants to change their non-aligned status and join Nato.

EU leaders who want a tough line against Russia will insist on having a like-minded person in the job of council president.

Countries closest to Russia including the Baltics, Poland, Sweden and Finland support someone like the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk to take over from Herman Van Rompuy. The foreign job could then go to someone from a country perceived to be soft on Moscow, such as Italy’s Federica Mogherini.

However frequently those who go into the meeting as favourites come out losers and compromise candidates emerge. They need to emerge in pairs however as the politics insists that one job goes to a centre right Christian Democrat politician and the other to the Socialists.

This of course opens the door to those seen as acceptable, consensus politicians such as Taoiseach Enda Kenny but Central and Eastern European candidates also have a claim, such as the former Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip or ex-Latvian PM Valdis Dombrovskis.

Another pairing could be Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt who has wide support, and Commissioner for International Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva which would mean a ground breaking two women in top posts.

But despite Mr Tusk’s poor command of English or French, and fears that his government in Warsaw will collapse if he leaves, he was favourite with diplomats in Brussels, and Germany appears to have come around to giving Italy the foreign role.

Once these posts are agreed, Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, can allocate posts. Ireland’s Phil Hogan is known to be interested in agriculture but could have competition from the incumbent, Romanian Dacian Ciolos, who wants to remain there.