If Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende is passed over for new EU president, at least he will be in good company. Other people who narrowly missed a top EU position include former Dutch prime ministers Wim Kok and Ruud Lubbers, and former Belgian prime ministers Jean-Luc Dehaene and Guy Verhofstadt.

The job Balkenende is competing for is not the same - the others were in the running for EU Commisison president -, but the issues are the same: disagreement over what course the EU should follow, and a show of force between Berlin, London of Paris.

No Belgians please

In 2004 French president Jacques Chirac and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder put their weight behind the liberal Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt to succeed Commission president Romano Prodi. But Angerla Merkel, then the president of the German Christian Democrats, together with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and British prime minister Tony Blair wanted Chris Patten, a British Conservative, for the job. Blair thought Verhofstadt would steer Europe towards federalism, and he hadn't forgotten the Belgian leader's opposition to the 2003 Iraq war.

In the end neither one got the job. At a meeting of the European People's Party, the Christian Democrats and Conservatives in the European parliament, EPP leader Wilfried Martens told then Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Barroso: "You should realise that we are playing a game of three-cushions billiards here. It is perfectly possible that the ball headed towards Patten will eventually end up in your camp." Barroso ended up succeeding Prodi.

Kok too coy

Perhaps Verhofstaft had been to eager to get the job in 2004, but it doesn't pay off to be too reluctant either. When Jacques Santer's Commission was forced to resign in 1999 because of allegations of corruption, both Schröder and Blair wanted Wim Kok to succeed Santer. But Kok kept saying he wasn't interested for so long that they eventually went with Prodi.

Five years earlier it was considered "a mere formality" that Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene would be the one to succeed heavy weight Jacques Delors as Commission president. Both French president François Mitterrand and German chancellor Helmut Kohl supported Dehaene.

Not for the last time it was the British who spoiled the game. In the eyes of prime minister John Major, Dehaene was a self-declared federalist who wanted to take the European Union exactly where Major didn't want it to go. London would only consider British EU Commissioner Leon Brittan or Ruud Lubbers, in that order. But Kohl was dead set against Lubbers. He hadn't forgotten the outgoing Dutch prime minister's criticism of the way Kohl handled German reunification five years earlier.

Poker-faced Lubbers

At the June 1994 Corfu summit Dehaene, after much wrangling, got eight countries behind him and Lubbers three; only Britian supported Brittan. When Spain and Italy switched their support from Lubbers to Dehaene, Lubbers threw in the towel, followed by Brittan.

In his memoirs, Major recalled: "Ruud Lubbers, I noticed, sat poker-faced with not even a twitch at the corners of his mouth. He would have made a fine president."

With only Dehaene left in the game, Major wanted to see new names. Kohl, who was taking over the EU presidency a week later, came up with Luxemburg prime minister Jacques Santer. When he felt out Major about Santer, the British prime minister hesitated at first. But he realised a second British veto would be a tough sell. Major accepted Santer, describing him as "the least unwelcome candidate available".