How Europe’s political parties will select their candidates for the presidency of the European Commission
Europe’s biggest political parties are trying to make the choice of the next president of the European Commission dependent on the outcome of May’s elections to the European Parliament. To that end they will put up their candidates for the Commission presidency ahead of the elections. The reasoning – to which they all apparently subscribe – is that voters will be more inclined to take part in the elections if there is more at stake, and that the choice of one person to head the Commission would be a genuine Europe-wide choice.
Legally speaking, it is the European Council that chooses the Commission president, though it must, according to the Lisbon treaty, take into account the outcome of the Parliament elections. Politically speaking, it will be hard for the Council not to take the candidate of the party that performs best in those elections. It follows that the contests within each political group to become the candidate for the Commission presidency will be very important. Below we set out the procedures and timing for those separate contests. Only when the last candidate is chosen will that Europe-wide choice take shape.
Click Here: NRL Telstra Premiership
In July, the European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Andrew Duff, a British Liberal MEP, calling on European political parties to put forward candidates to be president of the European Commission early enough for them to conduct a Europe-wide campaign and to hold public debates between the candidates.
The non-binding resolution, adopted by a large majority, also seeks to firm up the link between the elections to the Parliament and the selection of the Commission president, by setting out the expectation that the European Council will first consider the candidate from the party with the most seats in the Parliament.
Article 17, paragraph 7 of the EU’s Lisbon treaty lays out the procedure for the election of the president of the European Commission by the European Parliament: “Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission.”
The treaty also contains a declaration on the election procedure for the EU’s top officials, according to which “due account is to be taken of the need to respect the geographical and demographic diversity of the Union and its member states”. According to another declaration, representatives of the Parliament and of the European Council will hold consultations to ensure that the nominee put forward by national leaders has parliamentary backing.
The centre-right European People’s Party, whose political group is the largest in the current European Parliament, will announce its candidate at a conference in Dublin on 6-7 March. The procedure for choosing a candidate is still being developed. One reason for the EPP’s reluctance to commit itself to a particular process, or indeed candidate, is that many of its leading politicians are currently in office and might not want openly to campaign. Plausible contenders are Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuania’s president since 2009 and a former European commissioner for the budget, and prime ministers Donald Tusk of Poland, Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, Jyrki Katainen of Finland, Enda Kenny of Ireland and Valdis Dombrovskis of Latvia. Other potential candidates are Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and two serving European commissioners – Luxembourg’s Viviane Reding and France’s Michel Barnier.
The European Green Party will pick a pair of candidates through an online primary. The party opened its call for candidates early in September; it closes on 20 October. From 21 October to 4 November, member parties are to pick a candidate they want to support, and candidates supported by four or more parties will go on to the voting phase of the online primary, which ends on 28 January. The following day, the two leading candidates will be announced and their candidacy formalised at an election congress on 21-23 February.
The European Liberals will meet in London late in November to draft their campaign platform, and the party leadership is expected to discuss possible candidates at a meeting on 19-20 December. The names of contenders are expected early in January, with a final nomination around a month later. There is an expectation that Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the ALDE group in the Parliament, will seek the nomination. As a former prime minister of Belgium, he meets one of the informal preconditions of the European Council – that the candidate be a current or former national leader. Potential alternatives include Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs and the euro.
The Party of European Socialists (PES), which is hoping for a significant boost from the Parliament elections, opened its nomination process last week (1 October); it ends on 31 October. The names of candidates will be disclosed at a meeting of the PES presidency on 6 November, and candidates will have December and January to gather support from member parties and affiliated organisations. The result of the process will be announced at an extraordinary party congress in February. Martin Schulz, the current president of the European Parliament, will stand. He has the advantage of holding a position that allows him to campaign for the Commission presidency without difficulty. However, as someone who has never held executive office, Schulz is an awkward candidate for the member states’ leaders. Other possible contenders include José Luis Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister in 2004-11; Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s prime minister since October 2011; and Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization from 2005-13 (and a European commissioner for trade in 1999-2004).
14-17 April 2014
Last plenary session of the current European Parliament.
22-25 May
Elections to the European Parliament.
June
Formation of political groups in the Parliament.
26-27 June
European Council nominates president of the European Commission.
1-3 July
First plenary of the new European Parliament; election of president, vice-presidents, quaestors and committee chairs.
14-17 July
Second plenary of new Parliament; election of the president of the European Commission.
July-September
Formation of new college of European commissioners.
1-11 September
Hearings of nominees for Commission.
October
Parliament confirms new college of commissioners, which takes office on 1 November.