A flame-haired Latvian known as the 'Iron Lady of the North' is leading a pack of last-minute contenders who have joined the closing round of the race to become the EU's first President. Twenty-seven EU heads of state will meet in Brussels tomorrow night to pick a name, but diplomats warn that the lack of agreement over the best candidate means the summit could run into Friday or even longer.
 
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who was President of Latvia until 2007 and led the former Soviet state into the EU and NATO, is the only female candidate applying for the newly-created job. Over the past days, another Baltic colleague, Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has added his name to the rapidly growing list of presidential hopefuls, which is now thought to include around a dozen potential candidates.
 
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Known for her charisma and outspoken views, Ms Vike-Freiberga was an enormously popular leader in her country, where thousands of grateful Latvians turned out to lay flowers for her when she retired. However, she is now aged nearly 72 and despite a vigorous campaign on Facebook and in a string of European capitals, she looks unlikely to unseat the current favourite, Belgium's Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy.
 
Undemocratic
However, her candidacy feeds into growing demands to appoint a woman as either President or EU High Representative, the number two post created by the Lisbon Treaty. The campaign was launched a few months ago from the top floors of the steel-and-glass European Commission building, where the EU's two female big-shots, Dutch Commissioner Neelie Kroes and her Swedish counterpart, Margot Wallström, have their offices. Both have both thrown their weight behind Ms Vike-Freiberga and told RNW that it is "utterly undemocratic" that not more women hold senior positions in the EU "given that women account for 52 per cent of the population in Europe".
 
Ms Kroes, the high-profile competition tsar who has taken on corporate giants such as Microsoft, says the gender imbalance is so great that she would rather support a non-Dutch woman over her own Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, who is another leading candidate. "Gender matters more than nationality. There are so many good women in government jobs, they just have to be encouraged to apply," Ms Kroes told Radio Netherlands Worldwide last month. French politician Elisabeth Guigou and Britain's Catherine Ashton, the EU trade commissioner are other names doing the rounds.
 
Horse-trading
The gender discussion adds yet another dimension to the complex horse-trading involved in appointing both jobs. Although most of the attention has focused on the top job, it could be the de-facto EU foreign minister who ends up wielding more power, particularly if, as looks likely, a low-key consensus figure is picked as president.
 
"It's a much more interesting post and it will totally change the EU's role in the world. That person will have real access to power and money," says Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform. The High Representative will benefit from the creation of a de-facto foreign ministry, with over 7,000 diplomatic staff and a string of new EU embassies around the globe.
 
With Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband ruling himself out as 'High Rep', Italy's former foreign minister Massimo D'Alema is now being tipped as favourite, though eastern European states oppose him because of his Communist past.

Photo: World Economic Forum at Flickr