So, the Social-Democratic party's finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, recently became chairman of the "Eurogroup", which is the assembly of ministers of finance of those countries that use the Euro as their currency. Dijsselbloem was heavily criticized for his comments yesterday that he considered "the saving of Cyprus a model for future cases."

Instability on the markets ensued. It was basically a threat that the banking sector would be targeted heavily in future savings operations. That posed a direct threat to the world of business. I believe most people agree that he should not have said Cyprus was to become a model of how savings operations would be executed in the future. I agree with that.

Also, the social democratic party of the Netherlands is one of its most dangerous organisations. Firmly joint with the Moroccon and Turkish communities, they long refused any reform of immigration and of what we call "integration", the assimilation of people from other countries into our own. Nobody needs social democrats in this day and age.

However.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem was put under great pressure to accept his role of chairman of the Eurogroup. Why did they nominate him? Why would not minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany take this role? Surely, he was the best candidate for the job. Experienced, from the largest euro zone economy, competent, influential. All the things that Dijsselbloem is not! And with a good civil servants apparatus (civil servants serving the Union generally being qualified and well payed people) it would not be too much work for him.

So why an unexperienced Dutch minister, only months after his first gig dealing with finance? Alas, the mistake we make in Europe was made again. It was made when Herman van Rompuy was given the role of President of the EU. It was made when Jose Manuel Barroso was made chairman of the European commission. And it's the mistake that's being made again, and again, and again. Because we won't learn.

The mistake? It is the notion that putting a weak person on top of an organisation makes the organisation stronger, as this person would be more easily manipulable by its stakeholders and couldn't push his own agenda. How very Macchiavellean, but how very wrong. Appoint a former, 2year (!) prime minister of Belgium (!) to head of the European Union, and the guy will kiss your feet until his term ends. Why wouldn't he?

Here's the solution and I've presented it before: let the people of Europe *elect* the President of the European Union. He will not be head of state, he will not even be the equivalent of a European prime minister, but he will be the leader of those elements of the European apparatus that desperately require leadership at this moment. This is the only way that we will have a functional Union, in which crises like the Cyprus one will one day belong to the past.

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