(BRUSSELS) - Keen to see the end of the George W. Bush era, European officials hope the new US president will boost transatlantic ties and many already hope Barack Obama wins.

"In these times of uncertainty, the EU needs the US and, yes, the US needs the EU more than ever," EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said last week in a speech at Harvard University entitled "A Letter from Brussels to the Next President of the United States of America."

In a world where "global pandemics" can spread faster, the financial firestorm that started in the United States and is now battering Europe highlights "the interdependence of our economies," Barroso told his audience.

In the fight against climate change, in which Europe has assumed a leading role, the EU and the United States have a "moral obligation" to make deep cuts in emissions and to get China and India more involved, he argued.

Europe is eager to renew relations under a new US president, four years after the US intervention in Iraq deeply divided the EU and cast a shadow across the Atlantic.

That period has coincided with the resurgence of the West's Cold War adversary Russia, a fact which has intensified Europe's need for a united outlook with the United States.

"We are no longer in a unipolar world we knew when Bush came to power," explained Antonio Missiroli, a director at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre (EPC) think tank.

"We now have multiple poles -- China, Brazil, India -- which do not have the same interests in the way the international system is structured. There is therefore an enormous uncertainty and we need to face that together," he said.

According to French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the Europeans who have often seen diplomatic efforts run over by Washington's unilateral initiatives -- notably in the Middle East -- no longer want to be seen playing second-fiddle while Washington conducts the orchestra.

Europe also hopes that whoever wins the November 4 election, Democrat candidate Barack Obama or Republican rival John McCain -- will help relaunch international institutions including the United Nations, where Western initiatives are increasingly difficult to push through.

Obama is clearly the preferred choice for European leaders.

At a recent meeting of EU foreign ministers in France, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband took a mock US presidential poll among his European counterparts.

The result was never published, but analyst Daniel Korski, of the London-based European Council on Foreign Relations, is "pretty sure most of them voted for Obama." French president.

However even if the Democrat does win the presidential election, Europeans may be disappointed.

"The US clearly feels the transatlantic link is not enough to fulfill their foreign policy goals," said Korski.

Even if the European Union has become a bigger world player thanks to its expansion since 2004 into eastern Europe "we Europeans are not as central in the US foreign policy world as we used to be," he added.

Elmar Brok, a German member of the European parliament and deputy chairman of the parliament's Transatlantic Policy Network Group, does not think it will matter who wins the US presidency in one important regard.

"I think there will be no difference in the demands that the next US president makes on Europe. Both candidates will ask Europe for more, on Afghanistan, Iraq and so on."

According to the EPC's Missiroli, the next president that takes over in January will have a good chance to impose his priorities as the European Union is still without its reforming Lisbon Treaty, aimed at boosting its role on the world stage.

The EU's rotating presidency will also pass in January from France to new member, the Czech Republic, which, according to Missiroli, does not have the diplomatic clout or experience to impose its views.

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