Herman Achille, Count Van Rompuy[1] (Dutch: [ˈɦɛrmɑɱ vɑn ˈrɔmpœy] ⓘ; born 31 October 1947) is a Belgian politician who served as Prime Minister of Belgium from 2008 to 2009, and later as the first permanent President of the European Council from 2009 to 2014.

His eldest son, Peter, is involved in the Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V) party and was a candidate in the 2009 Belgian regional elections.

On 12 July 2007, Van Rompuy was elected as the President of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, succeeding Herman De Croo.

[19] On 28 December 2008, following the 2007–2008 Belgian political crisis, Van Rompuy was asked by King Albert II to form a new government[20] after he was reluctant to take up the role of Prime Minister.

On 13 October 2009, Bloomberg reported that the government of Herman Van Rompuy would seek to tax banks and nuclear power to tame the deficit.

"[23] On 22 October 2009, Reuters reported that the Van Rompuy government had signed a commitment with GDF Suez for nuclear power fees to Belgium.

A spokesman for Van Rompuy said the government would pass a law to enforce the 500 million euro charge for this year, adding that this could also be contested by GDF Suez.

Gordon Brown also praised Van Rompuy as "a consensus-builder" who had "brought a period of political stability to his country after months of uncertainty".

He has also described his role of chairing a body composed of 27 heads of state or government (and finding consensus among them) as being "neither a spectator, nor a dictator, but a facilitatorGiven Van Rompuy's support for Europe and opposition to far right, not all parties and factions had positive words for him when he took office.

British MEP and Eurosceptic Nigel Farage attacked the freshly appointed president by stating that he had "the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk.

"[28] The remarks generated controversy and he was fined €3000 (ten days' pay) by the President (Speaker) of the European Parliament for his unparliamentary comments.

It was at this event that the framework for the next decade of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was settled by the Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his successor Ashraf Ghani and their donors.

As seen at right, Gordon Brown, Hillary Clinton, Catherine Ashton and Anders Fogh Rasmussen amongst other Western leaders were in attendance.

The meeting took place on 11 February 2010, in the Solvay Library (Brussels), topics to be discussed were the future direction of the economic policies of the EU, the outcome of the Copenhagen Conference and the then recent earthquake in Haiti.

[33] In fact, the meeting was in part taken over by the growing sovereign debt crisis (at that time, Greece), which was to become the hall mark of Van Rompuy's first two years as president.

Its report, which proposed stronger macro-economic co-ordination within the EU in general and the Eurozone in particular and also a tightening of the Stability and Growth Pact was endorsed by the European Council.

The latter also charged him with preparing, by December 2010, a proposal for a limited change to the Treaty required to enable a more permanent financial stability mechanism.

His second year in office, 2011, was also marked by a deterioration of the Greek debt crisis, leading to Van Rompuy calling an extraordinary meeting of the Eurozone heads of state or government in July to adopt a first package of further measures (notably longer-term loans at lower interest rates, private sector debt-writedown, further fiscal consolidation in Greece) and again in October (in conjunction with full European Council meetings) to contain contagion from Greece to other countries (through bank recapitalisation across Europe and by leveraging the firepower of the EFSF to about €1 trillion).

Also in his team were the former (and later) UK Labour MEP Richard Corbett, former Hungarian Ambassador to NATO Zoltan Martinusz, former head of the EU's economic & financial committee Odile Renaud-Basso, Dutch philosopher and journalist Luuk van Middelaar, his main speech writer, and Van Rompuy's long standing press officer Dirk De Backer.