From the NY Times: For Poland, a Milestone in Choice for European Post

The job brings no real power and no extra pay. But the election Tuesday of a new president of the European Parliament was a significant moment for the 27-nation European Union, and certainly for Poland.

Jerzy Buzek, a former center-right prime minister of Poland, was elected president of the assembly with 555 votes out of 713 votes cast, becoming the first politician from an Eastern European country to hold one of the bloc’s high-profile posts.

—Once upon a time,— Mr. Buzek told the Parliament on Tuesday, —I hoped to be a part of the Polish Parliament in a free Poland. Today I have become the president of the European Parliament —” something I could never have dreamed of.—

Never mind that the position is largely ceremonial. It carries prestige, a few perks and a lot of symbolism, and Warsaw wanted it badly.

The vote Tuesday was the culmination of months of lobbying by the Polish government, which wants to silence those who argue that the former Communist nations are underrepresented in Europe’s decision making.

Before the vote, Eugeniusz Smolar, senior fellow of the Center for International Relations, a research institute in Warsaw, said that the election of Mr. Buzek would —be symbolic to many people in Central and Eastern Europe of an evenhanded approach —” and that the old-boy network ceases to be in place.—

Poland’s minister for Europe, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, said, —The fact that Buzek can become the president of the European Parliament is proof that enlargement of the E.U. has been a resounding success.—

Even some political opponents agree, and before voting, deputies from the Green Party had promised to back Mr. Buzek, not because they agreed with his center-right politics, but to send an upbeat political signal as part of the Parliament, which has grown in power even as turnout for elections has declined. Only 43 percent of eligible voters participated in elections to the assembly last month.

As president, Mr. Buzek will serve as chairman of parliamentary sessions. The job also involves representing the Parliament at summit meetings of European Union leaders and international events. All official travel is paid, and the president has the V.I.P. trappings of an international leader. The president also has a cabinet, which totals 39 members, including support staff and advisers.

…

Mr. Buzek, 69, is expected to bring to the post a new focus on Europe’s eastern neighbors, including Russia. Certainly his career contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor, Hans Gert Pí¶ttering of Germany, who has been a member of the European Parliament since 1979 —” a time when Mr. Buzek, then an academic and chemical engineer in Communist Poland, was about to join Solidarity, the movement that helped overthrow the government.

Born in the border region of Silesia, which at the time was a German-occupied part of Czechoslovak territory, he is a Protestant in a country where Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion.

After coming to power in 1997, Mr. Buzek became Poland’s first post-Communist prime minister to serve a full four-year term of office, enacting a series of domestic reforms.

Mr. Dowgielewicz, a political ally, said Mr. Buzek has a good domestic profile: —He is seen in Poland as someone who worked humbly in the European Parliament even though he is a former prime minister. Instead of searching out the TV cameras he was working hard within the Parliament.—…