I’ll start by asking an easy question: Who is the leader of the United States of America? Simple, it’s the president.

Here’s a harder one: Who is the leader of Europe?

One answer could be “the president,” but that immediately raises another question: Which one? Europe has three (or more) different presidents, all at the same time. Not one president and two vice presidents, but three separate offices, all of which could legitimately be referred to as “the president of the European Union.”

Before we go much further, a quick warning: This is about to get a little confusing. But there’s no avoiding it. In fact, it’s kind of the whole point of this article. European governance has all the orderliness, elegance and clarity of a 2-year-old’s spaghetti dinner.

The EU Presidents

Perhaps the most “presidential” office of the three is the European Council president, currently Herman Van Rompuy. He chairs the European Council—a council made up of the top leader, usually the president or prime minister, of each EU member state. The European Council should not to be confused with the Council of Europe, which is something completely different and not actually part of the EU.

He is also supposed to be the main external face of the European Union, though he shares this role with the high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

But the European Council president is not the only EU president to sit on the European Council. There’s also the European Commission president, currently José Manuel Barroso. He chairs the European Commission (which is different from both the European Council and the Council of Europe). The Commission is designed to be the EU’s executive body, the cabinet that proposes new laws. One member of the commission comes from each EU country. The commissioners are not supposed to represent their national interests, but instead work for the EU as the whole. For example, France’s commissioner, Michel Barnier, does not represent France to the commission, instead he works as the commissioner for Internal Market and Services.

Then there’s the European Parliament president, currently Martin Schulz. His role is more like the speaker of the parliament, though he does have some additional powers.

Finally, there is the presidency of the Council of the European Union (the Council of the European Union is not the same as the European Council or the Council of Europe). This presidency is held by a different EU country every six months. Currently it is held by Greece.

Did I say finally? Sorry, there’s actually (at least) one more. Jeroen Dijsselbloem is the president of the Eurogroup. This is a meeting of finances ministers from EU nations that use the euro. Dijsselbloem does little more than chair the meetings, but there have been calls to beef the role up in response to the euro crisis so that the eurozone has its own separate president.

The first three of these presidencies all end this year. So the next question is, who will replace them?

All Change

The most simple is the president of the European Parliament. He will need the support of the majority of meps in the parliament. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for one month’s time. After the elections, the political parties will have to form a coalition, and the parliamentary president will be decided during these negotiations.

The job of European Council president (Van Rompuy’s) will expire in November. His successor will be chosen by the leaders of EU nations. They’ll be a lot of horse trading, with compromises, delays and consolation prizes handed out until they can agree on which man, and most importantly, which nationality of man, gets the job. Last time around they deliberately chose a weak leader from a small EU nation so he couldn’t boss the national leaders around.

Which brings us finally to the European Commission president. Barroso’s term in office expires at the end of the year. How will his successor be chosen?

No one knows. Or rather, they can’t agree. Barroso was chosen the same way Van Rumpoy was—through political horse trading. The national leaders want to do the same thing this time around.

The problem is the Lisbon Treaty. When the EU was putting together its constitution, as the Lisbon Treaty used to be known, it wanted to be more like a state and appear to have more democratic legitimacy. Behind-the-scenes horse trading in order to pick one of the EU’s top jobs isn’t exactly democratic. But at the same time, national leaders didn’t want to give up any extra power.

So they came up with a standard EU compromise. National leaders would choose the Commission president after “taking into account the elections to the European Parliament.” The leaders wanted to take these elections into account the same way you take into account the views of the pub bore—nod sagely and then make whatever decision you were going to make anyway.

The European Parliament, on the other hand, is trying to turn next month’s elections into a presidential-style contest. Each parliamentary grouping has chosen a candidate for the next Commission president. They want the candidate from the parliamentary group with the most votes to get the job.

But some European parties disagree. Some parliamentary groups have chosen “no one” as their candidate—pointing out that if someone in the UK votes for the Labor Party this election, it’s because of domestic politics, not because they want some random German guy they’ve never heard of to be EU president.

These arguments have been going on for months, if not years, and with the election a month away, they’ve not been resolved. Under the Lisbon treaty, the national leaders will chose the man they want to be Commission president. But he will also have to gain the approval of the European Parliament. Parliamentary leaders have said that if the national leaders put forward someone other than the winner of the European parliamentary elections, they will use their veto to block him.

Hence the current farce—EU citizens will be going to the polls without knowing exactly what they’re voting for.

The result will probably be the standard EU procedure: lengthy negotiations, late night meetings and yet more messy compromises.

A Recipe for Disaster

Consider all the challenges Europe faces. Russia sits poised on the brink of invading eastern Ukraine, keeping the whole world guessing whether they’ll plunge Europe into crisis. Eastern Europe is crying out for help and leadership from the EU.

The euro economic crisis is still bubbling away beneath the surface. One in four workers in Greece and Spain is without a job. Youth unemployment in those two countries is well over 50 percent. The soaring unemployment could set off a social crisis at any time, with riots in the street. Currently, we’re in a lull. But the EU has met each outbreak of danger with its standard muddling, guaranteeing the problem will flare up again later.

Meanwhile America is retreating from the world and pushing for Europe to step up. Any crises in North Africa and even the Middle East are increasingly becoming Europe’s responsibility.

To survive, Europe clearly needs strong leadership. It needs to be able to react quickly and decisively to problems as they come up. Instead it has a handful of presidents, none of whom have much power, and it still hasn’t decided how to pick the next ones. Plus, with all the political posturing, there probably won’t be any decisive leadership from any of these presidents this year—assuming all the new presidents are even in place by the end of the year.

Which is why the EU, in its current form, simply cannot work. As these crises hit home, it’s going to have to undergo a radical transformation. The eurozone may need to be cut down. It will probably need to be much smaller to work together effectively. And it will need a new leadership structure.

None of these are easy changes and they won’t be made lightly. But Europe’s paralysis in the face of world events will leave them with no other choice. The problems it faces will just worsen until reluctant national leaders are forced to give a European leader real power.

The EU has almost everything it needs to be a global superpower. Its economy is bigger than the U.S. It has some of the world’s best universities and most capable workers, and a network of allies around the world. Even its military budget is huge compared to just about every nation except the U.S. But the most important thing it lacks is leadership.

This is the key ingredient that will turn Europe from a global joke into a global juggernaut—a power capable of holding its own against the U.S. or Russia. Watch for world events to force this radical change. For more on how it will come about, see Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker’s article “Watch for Mr. Europe!”