Seven wannabe European Commission chiefs — and one seeking to extend her reign — are going up against each other in the first debate of the EU election campaign.
Seven wannabe European Commission chiefs — and one seeking to extend her reign — are going up against each other in the first debate of the EU election campaign.
Who cares?
The commission president isn’t determined by the EU election but backdoor deals between governments.
The candidate is formally proposed by the Council but the Parliament still has to elect them which means the Parliament has the upper hand in any power play. Which worked out in 2014, Junker was the EPP’s candidate and they won a relative majority, it didn’t work in 2019 because Weber couldn’t convince the rest of the parliament. It’s possible that the EPP has learned from that experience but their candidate for 2024 is vdL anyway, it’d be highly unusual in European politics for a party to axe a candidate that wants a second term, at least without good reason.
There’s certainly still plenty of will in the Parliament to side-line the Council. One thing’s for sure should a party either have an absolute majority or be able to form a big/small party coalition (say, PES/EGP isn’t unlikely) they’re going to force the bigger party’s candidate through. But with the electorate voting as it does it’s the usual EPP/PES grand non-coalition so the Council will find ways to push their preferred candidate should there only be a modicum of disunity among that non-coalition.
I mean, for the 2019 election they put forward 2 candidates then we, the European voters, got to vote in the elections for EU parliament, then a third candidate won.
That does not inspire confidence in the Spitzenkandidat system.
The EPP could have put its foot down and said “Nope, we’ll only vote for Weber”… which probably would have deadlocked the election and caused a constitutional crisis.
And really this is what the Spitzenkandidat system is, always was: It’s the parties saying “we field this guy or gal for Commission President” and the EPP did try its best to push Weber but ultimately failed. It never meant “The Commission President is now elected directly by the people”.
In any case the political power play is within the Parliament, not within the Council. The Council can come in and suggest a candidate if the Parliament is hung but their role has shifted from actually deciding to being a mediator, “hey wouldn’t this candidate be a compromise that can be reached”. In practice, that means, also going into the future, that if the parliament gets its act together and agree on one of their candidates, that’s going to be the candidate, if it doesn’t, the Council is going to hum and haw until they’ve found a politician from the party which won a relative majority that is acceptable to the other parties.
It’s not precisely the German system where parliament alone proposes and elects the Chancellor so maybe the name is a bit off but it’s similar to other European countries where the president or monarch suggests a candidate to parliament. (In Germany, all the President does is swear the Chancellor in, in their role as notary of the state.) That kind of position doesn’t exist in the EU, so the Council it is. Arguably more democratic than, say, Spain, as the Council does have democratic legitimacy while monarchs don’t. It’s like if the Congress of Deputies proposed a candidate instead of the monarch. Though of course the Council is not made up like the Congress, like the Bundesrat it isn’t made up of deputies elected specifically for that purpose, but state governments.
And that is fine. I am German so as you line out, I don’t get to vote for the Chancellor directly either.
But there were two EP elections since the system changed. and in one of them the public vote didn’t matter.
That does not make for a good precedent and does not make me believe that it will be different this time.
If the EPP wins a relative majority, which is likely, we’re bound to get vdL again, if S&D wins… well, Schmit is from Luxembourg, they have a good track record at actually getting elected. Don’t know anything else about him, though.
Also, WTF is up with the French sending Rassemblement National into the parliament.