This is as confusing as it is absurd. In yesterday's meeting the EPP leaders back Barroso for a second term as President of European Commission but still no party is behind Barroso's ambition to renew his mandate as President of the European Commission.

One could expect that if the leaders of a party back a candidate of the same party and nobody in the party opposes, this candidate would become THE candidate of THE party. Not in European politics.

Same as EPP, the European Socialist Party has no official candidate for President of the European Commission. When Rasmussen, PSE President, was asked about the PSE candidate in the presentation of the PSE manifesto he said that they hadn't decided on a candidate "yet". At the same time socialist prime ministers such as Zapatero, Socrates or Brown already openly expressed their support for Barroso. I guess it is easy to back a candidate when the contest is a false one...

A Pole will be running for the European Parliament from Belgium. A first in the history of Poland's elections to the EP. 

The candidate is 26-year old Bartosz Lech and he will be 4th on the Ecolo (Greens) list in French-speaking Belgium. The Greens have just informed me of this.

European regulations allow any EU citizen to run for the EP from any member state they are living in, irrespective of their nationality. Some have taken advantage of the opportunity: the former Finnish race car driver Ari Vatanen is representing France in the EP.

For the past several years every parent of preschool kids has spent a small fortune for Gormiti's, Italy's answer to Pokémon. Just as the threadbare plots of hardcore films are devised to assist improbable combinations of body fluids, Gormiti scripts are devised to present enumerable opportunities to spend money on improbable biped forms which are divided up into "Peoples." The Isle of Gorm is inhabited by "the People of the Air," "the People of the Forest," "the People of the Volcano," and so on.

It's no surprise that the Island of Italy, too, now has invented similar products, such as "the People of Liberty," "the People of Life," "the People of Love," and so on, all motivated by "the Force of Virtue," "the Force of Values," and so on.

Sunday saw the demise of the historical democratic fascist party, born after the Second World War as the Italian Social Movement (MSI) and transformed into the National Alliance under the guidance of Gianfranco Fini. In their last congress in Rome the party committed euthanasia to be absorbed by Berlusconi's personal political entity, the blob now known as "the Party of the People of Liberty." It may spell the twilight of Gianfranco Fini's political parabola. The more militant fascist elements had long since become Berlusconi's favoured lieutenants, although nominally remaining in the National Alliance. Fini has filled a number of high profile institutional roles that have given him an aura of statesmanship. Yet that may be no more than the efficacious Sino-Italian strategy of promoting an adversary to an imminent position of  weakness.

He will be no dauphin for that is strictly a family affair.

Berlusconi declared that with his new personal political entity, "The People of Liberty," he trusts to have 52% of the popular vote. The Democratic Party leader, Dario Franceschini, asked why he had simply not gone for 92%.

In the queer world of Italian politics, one may hope that the absorption of the historical democratic fascist party by Berlusconi's political entity might bring the latter to more moderate positions. But as the cult Steve McQueen film showed all too clearly, a blob is a blob.