( dpa ) - Former French president Valerie Giscard D'Estaing, the architect of the defeated European Union constitution, said former British prime minister Tony Blair was the wrong man to become the EU's first president, the daily Le Figaro reported Thursday.
The EU president, Giscard said, "must come from a country that respects all European commitments."
Britain has refused to adopt the euro and the Schengen Agreement on internal borders, and is often at odds with other EU members on regulations governing social conditions, such as workers' or consumers' rights.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed Blair as a candidate to become the first individual president of the Union, a new post created in the revised EU constitution, which replaced that drawn up under Giscard's stewardship.
A French political ally of Sarkozy's, former prime minister Edouard Balladur, has also rejected Blair as a potential EU president.
Balladur recently wrote in Le Monde that, while in power, Blair "did nothing to put an end to Britain's unique status" in the EU.