The new European Treaty, currently being ratified by the 27 member states, creates a president for this agglomeration of 500 million people with a GDP now significantly larger than that of the United States. The EU has 2 million troops under arms, two nuclear powers in France and Britain, two seats on the U.N. Security Council and four members of the G7.

"The President of the European Council shall, at his level and in that capacity, ensure the external representation of the Union on issues concerning its common foreign and security policy," says the treaty.

That means summits with the American and Russian presidents, with the leaders of India and China and others "at his level."

The president will be the permanent chairman of the EU Council, the body where the heads of all 27 national governments meet four times a year. The treaty says the new president shall "drive forward its work" and "shall ensure the preparation and continuity of the work of the European Council."

In other words, the new president controls the agenda, the staff and the paper flow. This is real power. The term lasts for two and a half years and can be renewed only once. And he or she is chosen by the 27 government heads.

One likely candidate is that old friend of the United States, former British Premier Tony Blair. He has the overt backing of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and will have the support of the next Italian premier if as expected Silvio Berlusconi returns to power in Italy's election. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to make her views known, but she would not block a pro-Blair consensus.

As the champion of EU enlargement, Blair has many friends among the new member states of Central and Eastern Europe; he has global name recognition and is seen as a political heavyweight. And like Bill Clinton in the United States, he benefits from a certain nostalgia about the economic growth and prosperity on his watch. In some countries, Blair's recent conversion to Roman Catholicism might help.

Blair faces three main problems. The first is that many Europeans will never forgive him for joining President Bush in the Iraq war. The second is that he comes from Britain, a country that is not a member of the eurozone and has traditionally been seen as semidetached from Europe and less than committed to the grand project of European integration. France's Giscard d'Estaing, for example, takes this view.

The third problem is his uncertain relationship with his grumpy successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, who bears a grudge that Blair made him wait far too long for the succession. Brown's veto could sink Blair's hopes.

There are other candidates, notably that veteran of European Councils, Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker, or Germany's preferred choice Wolfgang Schussel, the former Austrian chancellor. Denmark's premier, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, may also be a candidate.

Many Europeans are wary of leaders from big countries like Britain, France or Germany and are more comfortable with able men from small nations. Such names would not, however, make the rest of the world sit up and take notice that the new European president was a very big new kid on the block.

As William Hague, probably Britain's next foreign minister, suggested to the House of Commons: "Occupied by someone with the political skill of our former prime minister, that post would become, in not so many years, a far more substantial one than the government pretend. The president would be seen as the president of Europe by the rest of the world, with the role of national governments steadily reduced and the role of national democracy and accountability steadily weakened."

Hague and the rest of the British Conservatives are against Blair's presidential hopes and against the treaty as well. But they do not have the parliamentary votes to stop it. And they have to contend with the prospect that Blair as EU president would be rather good for Britain, and with his firm belief in economic and social reform and in the Atlantic alliance, probably rather good for Europe as well.

There is no doubt that Blair is very interested. He has discussed the campaign required, and the priorities in office, with his former chief of staff in Downing Street, Jonathan Powell. His wife Cherie has given her approval. And the post-premiership job he agreed to do, as special envoy to the Middle East, has proved empty and frustrating. His book is well under way, and with it his financial future is secure. Blair is tanned, rested and ready.

His former Europe Minister Denis MacShane laid out the case for Blair in a recent op-ed in the Financial Times, the house journal of the EU and the Eurocrats.

"Mr. Blair remains the biggest leader Europe has produced since the era of Thatcher, Mitterrand, Kohl and Delors. He speaks French. Americans listen to him. He is still young. The world would respect an EU whose titular head was Tony Blair," MacShane wrote.

He went on to note one of the hurdles: "Whether he wants to submit himself to the dreary bargaining needed to get anything done in Brussels is another question. When he and I entered the bunker-like office block housing the European Council in Brussels, Mr. Blair groaned and visibly wilted at the hours of numbing talks that lay ahead to move Europe forward. Yet he was better than most at making the EU do things it needed to do."

But the opposition is building. There is already a hostile Web site, stopblair.eu, which is organizing a petition against him, arguing: "The steps taken by Tony Blair's government, and his complicity with the Bush administration in the illegal program of 'extraordinary renditions,' have led to an unprecedented decline in civil liberties."

Even if he loses, a Blair campaign to return to the center stage of world affairs across Europe would certainly be unprecedented and dramatic, and give Europe a higher profile than it has ever had so far.

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