EU leaders give President Michel another two and a half years | Abroad
The President of the Council of Heads of Government of the European Union, Charles Michel, has been allowed to stay on for another two and a half years. Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his 26 colleagues unanimously re-elected the Belgian liberal at the EU summit in Brussels. Michel’s re-election was already taking shape before the summit. There was no opponent.
The former Belgian prime minister has chaired the council of government leaders and heads of state since December 2019. He then owed that election to a quartet game with European top positions. The hard-fought divided between interests and political currents could again be unsettled if Michel were not allowed to sit.
Michel, 46, convened dozens of EU summits in his first two and a half years, although many of them were forced to hold video meetings due to the corona crisis. In any case, it will be over for him at the end of 2024, because a chairman can only be re-elected once.
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The Belgian council president has a bad relationship with his colleague Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, the executive board of the union. Tensions came to the fore when he failed to classify when von der Leyen came to visit Ankara with a seat on the bench, giving Michel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chairs the center of attention. Von der Leyen attributes this #sofagate to sexism.
The European Council has had a permanent president since 2009. The Belgian Herman Van Rompuy and the Pole Donald Tusk preceded Michel.
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