Brussels, 18/06/2009 (Agence Europe) - Leader of the European Liberal Party, ELDR, Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck said on Thursday 18 June, following the pre-summit meeting of European liberals, that her party fully supported the call from the European People's Party (EPP) for increased cooperation among the main European parties that back closer European integration in order to ensure stability in the implementation of Community policies. Expressing her satisfaction at the results obtained by the candidates of the national party members of the ELDR, she said that the liberals were prepared to take part in negotiations on the main positions to be filled if and when the Lisbon Treaty came into force. “At least one” of the four posts should go to a liberal, she added. Calling for “new extended cooperation in the EU between member states and political parties,” Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said that “the four liberal prime ministers (Ed: Lors Løkke Rasmussen of Denmark, Andrus Ansip of Estonia, Brian Cowen of Ireland and himself) will fully back Mr Barroso” for re-appointment as president of the European Commission. His Danish counterpart Lars Løkke Rasmussen argued that a several-month-long campaign to determine who would lead the Commission would be an unnecessary distraction, since the EU was facing huge challenges, including tackling climate change (to be debated at the international conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year ). Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen expressed his hope that Ireland would get the guarantees it had been calling for so that it could announce that it would hold a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the date of which will only be announced after the European summit. Backing the approach set out in the de Larosière report on the reform of the European financial supervision system, the outgoing leader of the Liberal Group in the European Parliament, Graham Watson, expressed the scepticism of his MEPs over the new European supervision authorities and said that he would have preferred a single body with responsibility for financial supervision in the EU. He hoped that the ELDR would be in a position to confirm his candidacy for the presidency of the EP in Bristol on 23 June. The liberals will select their EP leader in Brussels on Tuesday 30 June. UL MEP Diana Wallis has formally declared that she would stand for this post. (M.B./transl.rt)