@Kantor: What about the country of origin? The leaders did not choose a country but a person... A person that could be from Luxembourgh, Latvia, France, Hungary etc... 

That is like saying ' The president of USA can not be from the state vermont' or The prime minister of UK can not be from a city like Lichfield or Hereford but only from London, Manchester etc;.

He did a bad job?

- Van Rompuy helped calm the linguistically divided country after taking charge in December 2008 after 18 months of turmoil under predecessor and fellow Christian Democrat Yves Leterme.

Gordon Brown also praised Van Rompuy as "a consensus-builder" who had "brought a period of political stability to his country after months of uncertainty".This opinion is shared by others; he has been described as the painstaking builder of impossible compromises

-He was budget minister in 1993-1999 under the Christian Democrat-led government of Jean-Luc Dehaene and brought Belgium's debt down sharply from 130 percent of gross domestic product in the year he took office and went down to 105 percent of GDP when he left it. (That's why his nickname bank clerk came from....or one of the reasons)..

The EU population =  500 million;.. 

You did not really do any research did you?

He has basically no powers, if so you would hear a lot about him , not the kind of guy who can say 'let's invade Iran with our Eu military'...

He is more the kind of president in a classroom who has find out what the members want and find how to make everyone atleast a bit happy..  He talked about that a lot aswell:

"Every country should emerge victorious from negotiations. A negotiation that ends with a defeated party is never a good negotiation. I will consider everyone's interests and sensitivities. Even if our unity remains our strength, our diversity remains our wealth.

Yups he earns a lot of money for his job..I would not mind if it goes down a lot but that counts for a lot of people in the world..Same for the ones of UKIP;....They only need to go to the Eu parlement,  take some coffee then sit on their chair, read the newspaper for 15 minutes and go back home;....Blam another 200-300 Euro earned today....

I am not sure though why I replied to your post....,   You have no idea who van Rompuy is still call him incompetent, then going on that he rules over 731 million people etc..... Congratulations you totally belong to the UKIP.

From my experience:

Work office:  What kind of job do you search? What did you study?
Me:  *names his study*
Work office:  Great! We need a lot of your kind!  where did you study?
Me:  *names place outside of EU'
Work office:  oh...Euhm....Well I have a job for you...They need a cook in a Chinese restaurant...

This was the same before when you graduated in France you could not find work in Uk and vice versa....

Also it is a popular way to get in the EU....Say you are a skilled worker (make illegal papers) get an easy visum to go to an EU country and then dissapear and become an illegal.....The chance that they find you is small...

But I agree it is unfair...

In continental Europe having people from other EU countries work in your home country is seen in a more positive light. Alas... people concentrate on muslim immigrants here, instead.

I really think the UK should drop out of the EU to be honest. I prefer the UK being a member country but most people have an extremely negative image of the EU and if people prefered to drop out you should give them the right to do so.

I agree the EU is not democratic enough in a lot of ways and the European parliament needs to get more power so we can actually elect the parties and people we want. But what we need is not an anti-EU movement but some sort of pan-European party (not national parties that happen to form parliamentary groups). I'm especially sick of national leaders trying to get the best out of every situation for only their country while blaming everything that went wrong on the EU.

Europe has seen centuries of war and hatred, Nazis, communists and monarchists, changes of borders and I don't know what. I'd much rather live in a united Europe. I happily pay my taxes even if they are used to support Greece and Ireland because its not the people who drove those countries into debt but the governments that even lied to their people in the case of greece. But we can only make this a fair and liberal Europe if we stop thinking in national dimensions. What we need are leaders who are able to take responsibility for all people living in the EU. In no way does that mean changing our life-stlyes, though. If there was a pro-European movement by the people there'd be no fear of losing one's identity. But that is not in the interest of our national leaders.

Parts of the EU in its current form somehow manage to take away our sovereignty without uniting us. It should be the other way around. People united in freedom, not people divided in officialism. Merkel and Sarkozy didn't get that message, though.

A defined cap on immigration of this type seems ridiculous for reasons already mentioned as well as the lack of flexibility it provides to a constantly changing work force demand. I don't understand why a points based system can't be used and just tweaked to make it extremely difficult for anyone not currently required to work here.

Another potential major issue is the effect on universities this may have. International students provide a significant income for numerous universities (as well as obvious academic benefits) subsidising home students. Suggestions are that half of the international student Visa's will need to be cut to meet the immigration cap which could prove to be a double hammer blow for universities as they are already being hit with substancial cuts.

Not any more lol! $9000 in tuition fees is enough to fully fund a course.

Arrghhh, I was working in a building next to the protests at university yesterday, they even tried to storm it! Not sure what they hoped to achieve by occupying a building already full of university students!!

The problem with the rise in fees is that not all courses will be charging the same (depending on the level of cuts they face) and those which do need to charge the maximum may find their numbers significantly reduced because of that so I suspect a lot of the funding short fall may not be fully made up (but this is a whole other topic!!).

Guys, think about this.

What is the Conservatives main voter base? Middle-class and up, basically, skilled workers.

Who suffers most from skilled migrants? Domestic skilled labourers.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they implemented this policy. As to whether it's beneficial for the nation, that's a whole new discussion.

The courses which cost more to run (sciences) are also exactly the ones the government claims we need more of. So expect applicants for that to drop off steeper than arts.

The worst part, I feel, is that more prestigious universities will be restricted to those who are rich (or, bizarrely, the very poor who benefit from grants) because they will feel they can charge more. The middle class (which I will define as ~$35k-$60k household earnings) will be stuck.

For example I am at Cambridge, but if they raised it to £9000 I don't think my family could afford for me to go. And I'm certain Cambridge will charge the maximum based on their public statements about this.

The price of the course will reflect the demand. If the price falls below costs, then it will be inefficient for those courses to remain running.

This is something that, simply, I don't understand. My family isn't paying a penny towards my tuition fees, and they wouldn't do if they rose to £9,000. No matter what the tuition fees are, my family is no better or worse off. All of the debt is on my head (through Student Finance).

Rising tuition fees won't stop anyone from going to University if they take on the debt, themselves. Whether or not it's worthwhile taking on the debt is all dependant on what sort of career you are likely to get when you leave. As such, only the courses that result in high-paying jobs will reach the maximum level of tuition fees, and others will be offered at lower fees, or the course will be ended. It's just simple economics through the price mechanism.