Tony Blair’s dream of becoming Europe’s first president is set to be decided amid celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Every EU leader will be in the German capital on Monday to commemorate one of Europe’s defining moments but the next phase of the European project is likely to be foremost in their minds.

It will be the first chance for Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish Prime Minister, who is in charge of drawing up a shortlist for the job of president of the European Council, to canvass opinion since the Czechs became the final country to sign the Treaty of Lisbon.

Mr Reinfeldt, who arrived back from an EU/US summit in Washington yesterday, has begun to make telephone calls to fellow leaders, but it will be in Berlin where he can hold the crucial one-to-one meetings that will decide which names come through. One EU diplomat predicted that Mr Reinfeldt would try to use the occasion to narrow the field to one or two candidates and would then call a summit. “The Swedes are unlikely to hold a summit until they have a clear sense of the outcome,” the diplomat said.

Mr Blair’s chances have been severely damaged by a group of leaders from the EU’s smaller countries, referred to as the “seven dwarfs”, who want one of their own in Europe’s top job.

Soundings will also be taken on Monday for the job of EU foreign minister, for which David Miliband is considered a leading candidate should Mr Blair fall out of the presidential reckoning. Massimo D’Alema, a left-wing former Italian Prime Minister, has emerged as the Foreign Secretary’s main rival. The 60-year-old fan of AS Roma, who was leader of his country from 1998-2000, is said to have support from Germany, not least because his appointment would effectively rule an Italian candidate out of the chairmanship of the European Central Bank, leaving the road clear for a German, Axel Weber, head of the Bundesbank.

Lord Patten of Barnes, the Tory former British member of the European Commission, has been talked up by the French media as a possible EU foreign minister but would not fit the deal being pushed by the main political groupings in Europe for the president to come from the Right and the “high representative for foreign and security affairs” from the Left.

Mr Blair’s allies insist that he is still in the running to be president, but a new favourite has emerged — Herman van Rompuy, the Prime Minister of Belgium.

Together with the leaders of Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Mr van Rompuy wants the new EU foreign minister to be more prominent than the president. The leaders of Denmark, Finland, the Irish Republic and Sweden are also jointly calling for a “chairman, not a chief” in a move calculated to rule out Mr Blair.

Mr van Rompuy is a keen writer of haikus, one of which runs “Winter: As the last leaf falls/Naked branches show themselves/Winter shows itself”.

But each of the three Benelux countries has a candidate under serious consideration in the “chairman not chief” scenario. Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister, has tried to bury his Harry Potter nickname by changing the style of his glasses. He is a devout Calvinist Protestant who has won three general elections and received a positive mention recently from Angela Merkel, the Chancelor of Germany, for his fluency in German.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg Prime Minister, used a recent interview in Le Monde to insist that he was “not a dwarf” after claims that he was a political pygmy. Although he represents the EU’s second-smallest country, the chain-smoking Mr Juncker has long punched above his weight and chairs the 16-nation group of countries in the single currency.

He would be Britain’s nightmare choice of president with his unashamed championing of greater European integration.

In Europe there was a measure of relief that the Conservative leader David Cameron had not taken a more aggressive line in his response to the signing of the Lisbon treaty. Elmar Brok, a leading German MEP in the mainstream conservative group in the European Parliament and a close ally of Mrs Merkel, said that some of Mr Cameron’s proposals were unnecessary and others unworkable.

But he added: “I am optimistic because I have always admired the pragmatism of British politics. If we start doing practical work then I think these debates will calm down. As we say in Germany, nothing is eaten so hot as it is cooked.”

Latest odds

Herman Van Rompuy 11-8

Tony Blair 10-3

Jan-Peter Balkenende 6-1

Jean-Claude Juncker 6-1

Paavo Lipponen 8-1 Fredrik Reinfeldt 10-1

Wolfgang Schüssel 10-1

François Fillon 14-1

Guy Verhofstadt 14-1

Felipe González 16-1

Martti Ahtisaari 16-1

John Bruton 20-1

Vaira Vike-Freiberga 20-1

Mary Robinson 25-1

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen 25-1

Anders Fogh Rasmussen 33-1

Bertie Ahern 50-1

Lord Patten of Barnes [50-1

Angela Merkel 100-1

Gordon Brown 100-1

Source: Ladbrokes.com

Times Recommends

• Times Charity Appeal: SolarAid
• Is it Black Monday all over again for Dubai?
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal