Henry Kissinger, former National Security advisor and Secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford supposedly wondered what the phone number for Europe was, unlike to the Kremlin there is no direct line to Europe from the white house. Instead the US president has to consult with various of the major European Powers, probably the UK, Germany, France and Italy, along with those in charge of the EU; the president of the commission and whoever is the rotating president - that could be such small and reletively irrelevent countries as Luxembourg or Estonia.

The Lisbon treaty was supposed to clear this up. There would be a President of Europe and a Foreign minister. These would be the people to talk to in Europe. However Europe wanted a weak consensus building President so picked Van Rompy rather than opting for a President who would try to set a course for Europe as a whole, such as Tony Blair. This means that we now have an extra position and nothing is sorted. There are now four presidents: president of the European Parliament, President of the Council of the European Union (the rotating one), The President of the European Comission (the bureacracy) and the new one, the President of the European Council Van Rompy. (exclusing of course the 'Council of Europe' that is a totally seperate organisation!)

This confusion has simply lead to conflicts over who gets to take the lead resulting in squabbling and no one taking the lead, not what other great powers want to see so depriving Europe of a voice and leadership.

It seems silly to want an individual phone number for Europe. Most of these presidents do different roles - obama would not want to be phoning the leader of the house of commons so why phone the president of the European Parliament. Talk to each of the individual states when they have an involvement, he would not talk to the secretariat of ASEAN if he wanted Thailand's opinion on something so why talk to a European President until it has real powers. The main area of confusion is whether to phone the new president or the old rotating president. In time this will almost certainly move to a default position of phoning President Van Rompy because there will be consistancy in who holds the office rather than the holder changing every six months.