Discussions, lobbying and negotiations on who should lead the EU next
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European Union leaders are converging on Brussels to haggle over who should lead the 28-nation bloc’s key institutions for the next five years after weekend elections shook up Europe’s political landscape.
AP reports that presidents and prime ministers are expected to meet over dinner Tuesday evening to choose who should take over as head of the EU’s powerful executive branch, the European Commission, currently led by Jean-Claude Juncker.
They are also likely to weigh candidates for European Council president to replace Donald Tusk, EU high representative — essentially the foreign minister — and head of the European Central Bank.
POLITICO reports that French President Emmanuel Macron, who joined with the Liberals to form a new centrist force that won 109 seats according to initial results, had dinner in Paris on Monday with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the EU’s most prominent Socialist leader, clearly with an eye toward forming a progressive alliance that could stop the EPP’s lead candidate, German MEP Manfred Weber.
It adds “first there is the fight among the EU’s major political families, the Conservatives, who insisted on Monday that by finishing first with 180 seats they have rights to the Commission presidency, and the center-left Socialists, the Liberals and the Greens, who declared that their combined tally of 324 votes has delivered a clear mandate to break the EPP’s monopoly control of EU institutions.
Then, there is a tug of war between the European Parliament, which has demanded that EU leaders respect the Spitzenkandidat or “lead candidate” system, and the leaders of the European Council, who have said that they cannot — and will not — be bound to follow it. That system envisions the Council choosing as Commission president one of the “lead candidates” from the election who can win a majority in Parliament.
