Patten Leads Race for Top Europe Job

The former Conservative Party chairman, Chris Patten, is the front-runner to become the next President of the European Commission after Number 10 signalled it would respond 'positively' to moves to appoint him.

Downing Street officials said that, although no decision had been taken on who the British Government would back for the position, it was made clear Patten was someone the Government 'could do business with'.

A Conservative as President of the Commission would be welcomed by many in the Government. Patten, a serving British commissioner at the EU until his departure in September, is known to be close to Tony Blair and could be used to show that the European 'project' has cross-party support.

The current President, Romano Prodi, a thorn in the Government's side, leaves office in the next few months.

'If we want to show that Europe is based on a cross-party alliance, a moderate Tory as the head of the commission would be very useful,' said one senior Whitehall figure.

Yesterday Patten refused to rule himself out of the running for the £100,000 job. 'I would need a great deal of persuading, even if I was asked, which I haven't been yet,' he said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

EU leaders celebrating the union's historic enlargement were discussing the next head of the European Commission in Dublin last night.

But diplomats said it was too early to say whether Patten was likely to end up replacing Prodi in the top job. 'There are a number of very prominent and very outstanding people whose names have been floated,' Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister and holder of the EU presidency, told reporters.

In domestic terms, the former Tory party chairman would be a brilliant choice for Blair, desperate to recruit heavy guns to take on the Tories in the referendum he announced on the EU's controversial new constitution.

But his nationality could be a problem - especially for France and Germany - because of Britain's exclusion from the eurozone, the EU's biggest project now that enlargement has taken place. 'Coming from a country that is outside the eurozone would be the key question about Patten,' said one senior EU official.

Other candidates for the commission presidency job, however, may have peaked too soon. Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg Prime Minister, has ruled himself out. Antonio Vitorino, the Portuguese justice commissioner, belongs to the Centre Left. Wolfgang Schüssel, the Austrian Chancellor, is unpopular because of his alliance with Jörg Haider. Pat Cox, the Irish president of the European Parliament - and a Liberal - would have to be nominated by an apparently reluctant Ahern.

Cox is articulate and Anglophone, but has nothing like the experience of the former Hong Kong Governor in international politics.

The last British President of the Commission was Roy Jenkins, then a former Labour Chancellor, who is remembered as one of the most successful holders of a difficult and thankless job.

Patten himself said British resistance to the constitution made the prospect of a British President of the Commission in the near future much more remote.

'I think there will be some problems even for a British commissioner in the next year or 18 months, given that others will undoubtedly have ratified a new constitution and we will still be havering and hovering and wondering what to do,' he said.