So what do we know about the newly elected Herman Van Rompuy, President of the EU and Belgium PM.
Herman was born in 1947 in the municipality Etterbeek, in Belgium, the land of chocolate, waffles and sprouts. The other most famous inhabitants from Etterbeek include Hergé, the creator of Tintin and Everton FC’s cult figure Marouane ‘afro’ Fellaini.
He is the son of Vic Van Rompuy, an economics professor and probably subject of a children’s book.
Herman has a degree in Philosophy and a Masters in Economic Sciences from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium
He is a member of the Christian Democratic and Flemish Party, who are part of a coalition government. It’s quite complicated to work out and understand but I think they won 30 of 150 available seats in the ‘lower house’ of the Belgian Federal Parliament, at the last election in 2007.
He has been Prime Minister of Belgium for less than a year. Just a few days before taking the Prime Minister’s post he said he was not in the running.
He wrote a book called “The inside of a crack. Evenings without politics”.
So he should fit right in at the EU then.
They call him Haiku Herman, because of his love for poetry and writing Haiku such as this:
Water
Pee waiting
to heat to evaporate.
Water is a cloud.
Yes, as a victim of stage fright at the urinals on many occasions, I can totally relate to this.
But surely Herman’s greatest achievement will come next year, when he wins the Nobel Peace Prize. For if Obama can collect one for ‘not being Bush’ then Van Rompuy must surely be just as deserving for ‘not being Blair’.
WHAT TO DO NOW?