[11] The Constitution was rejected by voters in two Member States during ratification but the changes envisaged to the European Council presidency were retained in the Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force on 1 December 2009.

The first president was expected to define the role for future office holders, as there was no clear idea of how the post would evolve.

This would attract semi-retired leaders seeking a fitting climax to their career and would leave most work to the Commission rather than wield power within the institutions.

The office would hence be quickly fashioned, according to promoters, into a de facto "president of Europe" and, unlike the first model, would be seen on the world stage as speaking for the EU.

Incumbants had little time to devote to preparing meetings, as they had a national government to run (a growing problem as the number of members to negotiate with expanded with EU enlargement).

Allowing the European Council to choose a full time, longer-term President who was not simultaneously a national head of government avoided these problems.

The Treaty of Lisbon does not define a nomination process for the president of the Council and initially several official and unofficial candidates were proposed.

At the final European Council meeting on the treaty in Lisbon, on 19 November 2007, French president Nicolas Sarkozy set off public speculation on candidates by naming Tony Blair, Felipe González and Jean-Claude Juncker, and praising the three as worthy candidates[15] with Blair in particular being a long time front runner for the post.

[citation needed] On 19 November 2009, Herman Van Rompuy, at that time Prime Minister of Belgium, was appointed the first full-time president of the European Council.

[16] The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said that he had unanimous backing from the 27 EU leaders at the summit in Brussels on the evening of 19 November 2009.

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

[19][20] The president's role is largely political, preparing the work of the European Council, organising and chairing its meetings, seeking to find consensus among its members and reporting to the European Parliament after each meeting; the president will also "at his level and in that capacity, ensure the external representation of the Union on issues concerning its common foreign and security policy, without prejudice to the powers of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security".

Formal negotiations on the salary and privileges of the permanent presidency began in April 2008 as part of the draft of the 2009 EU budget.

Likewise, the idea of a private jet was also rejected for being symbolic and, as one diplomat pointed out, a discrepancy in privileges between the European Council and Commission presidents may only fuel rivalry between the two.

It saw a large salary and extras as a symbolic signal that the post is intended to become more powerful, increasing intergovernmentalism at the Parliament's expense.

Upon his retirement in the autumn of 2012, Didier Seeuws, former Deputy Perm Rep of Belgium to the EU and former spokesman for Belgian PM Verhofstadt, replaced him.

Also in his team were the former UK Labour MEP Richard Corbett and Van Rompuy's long standing press officer Dirk De Backer.

The president of the European Council is elected by its members through a reinforced qualified majority vote for a once-renewable term of two and a half years.

[36] There have been calls by some, such as former German interior minister and former head of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble,[37] for direct elections to take place to give the President a mandate, this would strengthen the post within the European Council allowing for stronger leadership in addition to addressing the question of democratic legitimacy in the EU.