Le Monde: Bulgaria's Georgieva 'Rare Good Surprise' from Former Commission

Kristalina Georgieva was among the "rare good surprises" coming from the outgoing EU Commission, the French daily Le Monde wrote Wednesday.

In a brief sketch on Georgieva published on Le Monde's website after the new European Commission team was unveiled, she is described as a 61-year-old Christian Democrat that "has achieved the otherwise unattainable goal to give a soul to a Europe which has been lacking one over the past years."

As she appeared amid floods, earthquakes or in refugee camps, this vivid woman with a strong voice "skillfully strode on the media landscape left compвetely vacant by her colleague [outgoing High Representative] Catherine Ashton, leading the European diplomacy. Ashton shied away from the media from the first day," the media outlet argues.

The Bulgarian economist, who passed from Sofia's Karl Marx Institute to the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she taught, "quickly established herself as one of the possible contenders for the position of EU diplomacy leader".

Italian PM Matteo Renzi's campaign in favor of his candidate Federica Mogherini, however, put a wheel on this ambition, "even though [it] enjoyed the support of Jean-Claude Juncker," it adds.

Georgieva will have to content herself with the important position to which she believed she had a right and for which she was supported by her country, Le Monde notes.