President of the European Council also led to their rejection. 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. The formal decision on the appointment was made after the Treaty of Lisbon came into force on 1 December 2009. 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
President of the European Council Commission President (who already sits in the European Council). This would allow the European Council to concurrently appoint one person to the roles and powers of both President of the European Council and President of the European Commission, thus creating a single presidential position for the Union as a whole. Since the creation of the European Council presidency, former president Van Rompuy and former Commission President Barroso had begun to compete with each other as Van Rompuy had benefited from the general shift in power from the Commission to the European Council yet with Barroso still holding the real powers.