BRUSSELS (AFP) — An on-line campaign to stop former prime minister Tony Blair from becoming European Union president is gathering pace long before the job is even created.
Once the EU's Lisbon treaty is fully ratified next year, the prestigious post is to replace the EU's current presidency system which involves member states taking six-months turns at the job.
"We have been seeing support for a Blair candidacy... It seems to be getting serious so we have decided to express our opposition," said Jerome Guillet, one of the stopblair.eu organisers who have set up an on-line petition.
The campaign appears to be gathering speed, with over 3,000 "signatures" by Thursday morning, almost the double the number on Tuesday evening.
The goal is to get a million online signatures.
Guillet, who said the petition was set up on the "left-leaning" European website which describes itself as "founded by active contributors to the US progressive blogosphere".
The petition, available in 11 languages, asserts that appointing Blair to the post, which will have a two-and-a-half year term,"would be in total contradiction with the values professed by the European project."
Blair, 54, committed his country to a war in Iraq "that a large majority of European citizens opposed," and set a series of "red line" policy opt-outs when negotiating the EU's reforming Lisbon Treaty, the petition text complains.
"Furthermore, it seems unthinkable that the first President of the European Council should be the former head of a government that kept its country out of two key elements of the construction of Europe: the Schengen area of free movement of people and the Euro zone," it adds.
Blair's is one of the names that has been mooted for the EU's top job -- with notable backing from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
However France's Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet on Monday warned that Blair did not have the right profile for the future post.
Luxembourg's very EU-friendly Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker is another politician whose name has already been linked to the job.
The EU president's post is enshrined in the EU's Lisbon Treaty which has as yet been ratified by just a handful of the 27 member states. If all goes according plans the treaty will come into force next year.
Blair, who has reportedly been quietly assessing his chances for the post, already has his hands full since leaving Downing Street last June.
He is an international envoy to the Middle East, adviser to a leading Swiss insurer and a blue-chip US investment bank and a sought-after public speaker.
The list could get even longer. Blair has admitted he could see himself accepting a "handful" of similar posts: he has struck a deal for memoirs and launched a youth sports initiative; a faith foundation is in the pipeline.
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