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PARIS - Egos are taking wing and nations are starting to butt heads over who will get the biggest plum in world politics: the job of representing nearly half a billion Europeans.
The ink is barely dry on a treaty for institutional reform, signed in Lisbon last month by the European Union's 27 leaders, under which the planet's biggest trade bloc will appoint a president and foreign minister.
Some of Europe's heavyweights, led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are already marking themselves out as frontrunners. Even if no one has officially declared a bid, each is preening his record as a national leader, as Eurocrat, as a peacebroker in the Balkans and so on.
At present, the EU has a rotating president, under which member states each spend six months at the helm. The president chairs the EU's paramount decision-making body, the European Council.
This arrangement will be replaced in 2009 by a president appointed by the leaders to a 2 1/2-year term.
There will also be a "High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy", a beefed-up position that will combine a present job of that title with the Commissioner for External Relations, at the powerful EU executive, the European Commission.
After a decade in power, Blair has solid connections at top level in Europe and Washington. He has had a good show of support from his friend Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, who in October praised Blair as "the most European Englishman" and said it would be "quite smart to think of him" as EU president. In Brussels, too, he is highly regarded for his pragmatism and deal-brokering skills. In 1995, Blair's charisma secured a compromise on the EU budget, lasting until 2013 - a massive achievement by Europe's messy short-termism.
But there are two big strikes against a "President Blair".
First is Britain's semi-detached status in the EU, for it is neither a member of the euro nor of the Schengen border-free area. Blair strongly backed the opt-out policies he inherited from his predecessors. And there is Iraq and his friendship with George W. Bush, which makes him particularly unpopular in Italy, Spain and Germany.
Two other candidates have signalled an interest in the presidency - Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, an enthusiastic European, and Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen, a pragmatist in the Blair style.
"But being President of the European Council, people are saying off the record, would be difficult if you come from a small member state, no matter how successful that person was," says Marco Incerti of the Centre for European Policy Studies think-tank in Brussels.
"If you have Juncker, the head of a country with 500,000 people, talking to the American President or the Russian President, then this person doesn't have the same clout as Blair."
A compromise candidate could be the former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who is being promoted by Germany, say other sources.
As for EU foreign minister, the frontrunner is Spain's Javier Solana, the former Nato secretary and present High Representative who is credited as having done a great performance in defining and expanding this job. Others mounting a challenge include former Swedish Premier Carl Bildt, who helped cement peace in the Balkans, France's agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, a former foreign minister and ex-European commissioner.
Barnier has spent a week in Brussels this month to renew his contacts under the guise of an agricultural meeting and, rather strangely, went to Georgia as France's representative for the investiture of that country's new president.
Both the president and foreign minister can expect stellar salaries and everything flunkydom can provide. Being first in their jobs, they have the opportunity of projecting Europe as a single, powerful force as never before.
But in the lack of a clear job description, there is every risk of a turf battle if the future president tries to steer EU diplomacy rather than just take a ceremonial role abroad.
"It isn't quite clear what the division of tasks will be. We will need to see when the changes are implemented and the personalities of the people appointed," says Incerti.
And, he adds, there is also the risk of a "poisoned chalice" - that the constraints of answering to 27 heads of state will make these jobs not just arduous but toxic.
Securing agreement within the EU has been variously likened to trying to herd cats or resolve a Rubik's cube.
Diplomacy and security are the last domains of jealously-guarded national sovereignty in Europe, and it will take an individual with exceptional credibility to build support so that he can act with confidence.
TOP JOB
* The first permanent President of the European Council will be chosen by the leaders of the European Union member states.
* The job, which could be done part-time, would involve co-ordinating EU policy and brokering agreements between leaders of the 27 member states.
* The President will have a 2 1/2-year term which is renewable once.
* The job has been established to replace the existing system of rotating six-month presidencies between member states.
* The new post begins next January and will come with a salary expected to be about £200,000 ($515,000).
