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
2014 European Parliament election 17, paragraph 7 of the Treaty on European Union). This provision applied for the first time for the 2014 elections. Nevertheless, senior figures such as European Council president Herman Van Rompuy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and former Commission president Jacques Delors questioned the aspiration of European political parties to link the presidency of the European Commission with the result of the European elections and insisted that the future Commission president has to suit Member States' expectations first. Based on these new provisions, the following European political parties designated candidates for Commission president ahead of the 2014 election: the Party of