Brussels - Belgian commentators on Friday voiced concern at a seemingly unstoppable wave of backing for their country's prime minister Herman Van Rompuy to be offered the new EU president's role.

Van Rompuy was called by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after that pair's "tete-a-tete" dinner in Paris on October 28 "to tell him that they were thinking about him for the European president's job," the Brussels daily Le Soir reported Friday.

The answer was that the 62-year-old Van Rompuy "is ready to go," one Belgian diplomat told AFP.

While the initial Belgian reaction was incredulity that Van Rompuy had emerged as the bookmakers' hot favourite, it has now turned to concern that his departure could push the country into a constitutional crisis.

The astute, bridge-building Flemish Christian Democrat leader's emergence follows a fall in the prospects of former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Current British Foreign Secretary David Miliband could be the beneficiary of the changing momentum, as he now stands as the favourite to secure the other post created under the bloc's Lisbon Treaty, that of EU foreign policy supremo.

While not publicly confirming his endorsement, Sarkozy has praised Van Rompuy, saying: "I think nothing but good about him. He is a very good man, an intelligent man," the French leader told journalists this week.

There's the rub -- the Belgian political elite also think he is very good, almost indispensable.

The weekly magazine Le Vif-L'Express summed up the mood. "It is an honour that the country could have done without," it wrote under the headline "Van Rompuy superstar".

"His departure, if it is confirmed, could well throw the country into a new period of turbulence," it warned.

Van Rompuy only assumed the premiership last December, succeeding Yves Leterme whose fall was linked to the failure of the major Fortis bank but was also marked by feuding between Belgium's richer Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders and the poorer francophone Wallonia south.

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