The European election might be 15 months away but the Spitzenkandidat has already lost, sort of.
EU leaders on Friday rejected an automatic mechanism for selecting the next Commission president that they believe strips them of the power to pick Europe’s most senior official.
Meeting at an informal summit in Brussels, leaders of the 27 countries that will remain in the EU after Brexit rebuffed any guarantee of victory for a nominee from the so-called Spitzenkandidat (or “lead candidate”) process, which was first used in 2014 in the election of Jean-Claude Juncker. But in a classic display of EU squishiness, the leaders acknowledged that a lead candidate could well become the Commission president — but at their discretion and without any “automaticity.”
Under the system, pan-European groups of parties running in the European Parliament elections choose lead candidates to campaign across the Continent and challenge each other in debates. One of those candidates — most likely the nominee of the group that wins most seats in the election — should then be chosen by the Council as Commission president.
European political parties and the European Parliament have committed to following the process again in next year’s European election. It also has the strong backing of Juncker and his powerful chief of staff Martin Selmayr, who say it enhances European democracy.
But in a rare, public clash between the EU’s top officials, Council President Donald Tusk forcefully rejected that view.
“The idea that the Spitzenkandidaten process is somehow more democratic is wrong,” Tusk said, standing next to Juncker at a news conference. “The treaty says that the president of European Commission should be proposed by the democratically elected leaders of the member states. And that he or she should be elected by the democratically elected members of the European Parliament. This is the double democratic legitimacy of the Commission president. Cutting away any of the two sources of legitimacy would make it less democratic, not more.”
Still, Tusk acknowledged that the lead candidates would have an edge, and perhaps a decisive one.
“Of course, being Spitzenkandidat does not preclude you from becoming the future president of the European Commission,” he said. “I am absolutely sure it might even increase their chances, it’s obvious for me. But there is not and can be no automaticity.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated she expected the Council to ultimately nominate one of the lead candidates — even though it would not be obliged to do so.
“The reality is that the parties have this Spitzenkandidat concept,” Merkel said. “However, as the European Council, we have said that who exactly becomes the Council’s nominee to be president of the European Commission can’t be completely automatic.”
She added, “There won’t be any straightforward majorities in the new European Parliament. We can’t know who might form a coalition with whom. So we can’t just say it will be the candidate of the strongest party. We’ll have to see how majorities in the Parliament can be formed. That’s where the phrase ‘no automaticity’ comes from.”
The conversation among EU leaders on Friday focused squarely on the question of “automaticity” — whether the Council could legally commit in advance to automatically putting forward one of the lead candidates as its nominee. The answer, according to officials who observed the discussion, was a unanimous and resounding “no.”
The lead candidate process is not spelled out in the EU treaties, and it is controversial, with supporters insisting it is more democratic and critics saying it strips the Council and Parliament of their authority and duty to pick the best candidate, forcing them instead to accept the winner of a system driven by party insiders.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been skeptical of the process, which he would have little opportunity to influence as he is so far not aligned with a European political grouping. “There was a large agreement around the table to say there shouldn’t be any automatism between a Spitzenkandidat system that is internal to political parties and the fact that we would have our hands tied by it,” an Elysée official said.
Room for maneuver
The EU treaties require the Council, acting by qualified majority, to nominate for Parliament’s approval a Commission president “taking account of the results of the European Parliament election.” How to fairly take account of the results is at the core of the debate over lead candidates.
Because there are no written rules, the Spitzenkandidat process is interpreted in different ways. By some views, it should award the Commission presidency to the party winning the most seats in Parliament. Others say it should award the presidency to the lead candidate who is best positioned to win a majority in Parliament, who could be someone other than the lead candidate from the leading party.
Critics say the Spitzenkandidat process is little more than a handshake deal, minus the handshake. Among the complaints is that it effectively eliminates from consideration any candidate who is not a member of one of the major European political parties, including independent politicians like Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė. The critics say the process also rules out most sitting heads of state or government, because such officials are unlikely to resign to campaign for the Commission post, but could be convinced to take the job if drafted by the Council.
Grybauskaitė was one of the first leaders to publicly express her disdain on Friday, posting cheekily on Twitter: “Don’t count your Spitzens before they hatch. #EuropeanParliament election still a year away.”
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution declaring that it would not vote in favor of any candidate for Commission president put forward by the Council who was not a Spitzenkandidat. Still, that resolution was largely symbolic as it cannot bind the votes of members of the future Parliament, which is not yet elected.
Other EU governance issues were also on the agenda on Friday. At a closing news conference, Macron chastized the European Parliament for rejecting, at least for the time being, one of his pet proposals — to allow trans-national candidate lists for the European Parliament elections.
The leaders voiced broad support for a plan to reduce the number of seats in the European Parliament to 705 from 751 after Brexit, and to reapportion some of the existing British seats. The European Parliament has preliminarily approved such a plan, and the Council will take formal steps to enact it in the coming months.
In the same informal talks, the leaders endorsed Macron’s idea for greater citizen engagement in next year’s European election, but they sidelined his proposal for trans-national candidate lists, saying it would be reconsidered for the 2024 election.
And in a flat rebuke to Juncker, the EU27 leaders rejected his proposal for combining the Commission and Council presidencies. Juncker had raised the idea in his State of the Union speech in September and leaders had reacted coldly to it at that point. Tusk had not planned to raise the idea at Friday’s summit, but Juncker himself put it on the table and the other leaders quickly swept it aside. The leaders also expressed little support for another proposal that would potentially reduce the number of European commissioners.
Juncker, at the post-summit news conference, warned that the EU could be paralyzed if the Commission and Council presidents ended up in long-running opposition to each other. “The debate on institutional issues was friendly except when I raised the idea of merging the offices of president of the European Council and president of the Commission,” Juncker said.
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