The Spitzenkandidat, or “lead candidate,” created in 2014 seems all but dead. Under that system, pan-European political groups nominated lead candidates for the European Parliament election who were also their nominees for the Commission presidency.
The deadlock reflects the messy struggle between the EU’s main political groups after the historically dominant mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties lost ground in the EU parliament elections to liberals and greens. Other tensions are over the need to find a geographical and gender balance in filling the big five jobs of commission president, council president, European Parliament president, European Central Bank president and high representative for foreign policy.
Politico report that the outcome was a humiliation, the likes of which Angela Merkel had never experienced in her 13-and-a-half years as chancellor of Germany, and as the undisputed supremo of the EU’s dominant political family, the center-right European People’s Party. With EPP leaders, including at least six of the party’s other prime ministers and presidents, arrayed before her at the neoclassical Academy Palace in downtown Brussels on Sunday afternoon, Merkel laid out a plan for filling the EU’s top leadership posts that would install Frans Timmermans, a social democrat, as Commission president, the bloc’s top job, instead of the EPP’s own nominee, German MEP Manfred Weber.
Politico adds that apparently all the discussions — between Tusk and Merkel, between Schulz and Costa, between Weber and Timmermans — and all the planning — over dinner in Berlin and on the sidelines of the G20 in Osaka — had not included an effort to bring along the rest of the EPP, already angry at the prospect of no longer controlling all three of the major EU institutions.
Merkel, speaking in Brussels on Monday after the Council failed to reach a leadership deal and suspended its negotiations, suggested that she had expected other EPP leaders to spread the word.
Meanwhile, Tusk, Macron, Sánchez and Rutte thought Merkel had handled her party’s side of things. It was a misunderstanding that would prove highly damaging, effectively scuttling chances for a deal.
ANSA reports that Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte created an Italy-led front of 11 countries against a take-it-or-leave-it Franco-German “two-country Europe” package including giving Frans Timmermans the European Commission presidency, premier’s office sources explained Monday.
“Conte arrived at the EU summit “convinced that a veto was not needed” on Timmermans but then “found himself faced with a Franco German wall, compact in wanting to impose a take it or leave it package”, they said. This is when it became a question of principle and method for Conte, they said, and of respect for Italy and the European Council, because “Europe is 28 and not just two”.
The report adds “Conte managed to bring the other countries contrary to Timmermans onto this position too, “creating a front of 11,” the sources said. Conte told Corriere.it Monday that he had opposed a deal between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron for a package of EU job appointments including giving Timmermans the presidency of the European Commission because the accord risked “blowing on anti-Europeanism”.”
DW reports that the current European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans of the Netherlands, who was the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats’ (S&D) lead candidate in May’s European elections, was rumored to be the favorite in the race to succeed Juncker as president of the Commission.
World Bank chief executive Kristalina Georgieva was rumored to be Tusk’s likely successor as president of the European Council, with Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager or the current interim Prime Minister of Belgium, Charles Michel, in the running to be the bloc’s next foreign policy chief.
The S&D’s Timmermans was the compromise choice in a deal reportedly forged by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G20 summit in Japan, and which also included other top EU posts. The deal was also backed by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Among the EU leaders who have reportedly objected to Timmermans are Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia and Ireland.
The outgoing vice-president of the Commission has spearheaded EU efforts to crack down on authoritarian-leaning eastern EU members through the bloc’s rule of law norm.
Officially, the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, who leads a coalition government of the far-right League party and the M5S, lent his support in efforts overnight to scupper Timmermans’ candidature, which had been agreed between Merkel and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the G20 summit in Osaka before the meeting of the EU’s 28 leaders.
A rather furious Emmanuel Macron criticised the “profoundly tainted” EU on Monday, after divided leaders failed to break the deadlock over who should succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission president despite 20 hours of intense overnight negotiations.
The Telegraph reports Macron saying “We ended the day on what we can call a failure. It’s a very bad image we are giving of the Council and Europe, no one can be satisfied with what happened over so many hours,” the French president said.
“Our credibility is profoundly tainted with these meetings that are too long and lead to nothing, we give an image of Europe that isn’t serious,” he told reporters at the Brussels summit as he openly vented his frustration at the deadlocked process. “We cannot hold talks with world leaders, in an ever more violent world, and be a club that meets at 28 without ever deciding anything,” he added.
The Guardian reports “Angela Merkel warned that with Brexit “looming” imposing the centre-left candidate Frans Timmermans as European commission president risked creating a dangerous split with the populist governments in Poland and Italy.
With the leaders now forced to meet again in Brussels on Tuesday after being unable to agree on a candidate for the top post, the German chancellor said fears about the bloc splintering left her wary of trying to outvote critics of her compromise plan.
The so-called Visegrád countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary – had used the marathon 20-hour summit to rail against Merkel’s plan to replace Jean-Claude Juncker with his current deputy in the commission, who has been stern critic of governments in eastern Europe who have threatened their country’s judicial independence.”
However, EPP members would go on to question Merkel’s motives, saying she had agreed to a deal that was only good for Germany, for her personally, because it would help relations with the Social Democratic Party, her coalition partner in Berlin, and, to a lesser degree, good for Weber who, under the Osaka plan, was envisioned to become Parliament president for a double-term of five years.
The opposition was so fierce that Merkel left the EPP meeting early and headed to the Council’s Europa building to huddle with Council President Donald Tusk, French President Emmanuel Macron and others, on how to find a path forward. EPP members continued to seethe after she left.
The nominee to succeed outgoing Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker requires the approval of 21 of the 28 EU leaders, representing 65% of the bloc’s population.
