Time for the Spitzenkandidat to die

It is less than two years to the start of the next round of Brussels’ favorite contest: determining who gets the European Union’s top jobs. And already some wannabe successors to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are floating up candidate kites.

For once, there are some more than competent possibilities in the existing Commission. But the current so-called Spitzenkandidat system makes the election of the medieval-era Holy Roman Emperor seem transparent and democratic. It needs to be reformed. Failure to do so would play into the hands of Euroskeptics everywhere.

I was present at the creation of the Spitzenkandidat system (don’t worry I’ll explain the term below) 10 years ago, when I was the U.K. Labour Party’s representative on the executive committee of the Party of European Socialists.

There had long been complaints that the previous system — in which the top jobs were doled out in sordid backroom dealings between national leaders — was unacceptable. Even the pope gets elected, but choosing the top jobs in the EU basically came down to endless vetoes and trades between the Élysée in France, No. 10 in the U.K. and the Kanzleramt in Germany.

The U.K. was one of the game’s key players. Former Commission President Jacques Delors was elected with the backing of then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had been told the Frenchman was a center-right, pro-market Catholic (they failed to inform her that he also believed in social Europe and was a keen federalist). And it was Tony Blair who vetoed Belgian hopeful Guy Verhofstadt, and instead helped install José Manuel Barroso, who had backed him over the Iraq war.

Tony Blair (L) with José Manuel Barroso on July 22, 2008, in Brussels| John Thys/AFP via Getty Images

When the Lisbon Treaty created two new positions — a president of the European Council and a high representative for foreign policy — the convoluted trading only worsened. Barroso was allowed to stay on as Commission president ahead of the 2009 European Parliament election, thanks to a shabby deal between the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists.

The deal, in which the EPP took the Council presidency and the Socialists the foreign policy job, was announced as a fait accompli by group leaders, with no consultation with parties or MEPs — let alone European citizens.

Led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the EPP agreed on the former Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy as Council president. The Socialist bigwigs wanted then U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband to take the EU foreign policy post. But after he turned down the job, the largely unknown British Labour politician Catherine Ashton was appointed instead — again without consultation.

Neither Ashton nor van Rompuy made waves or offended heads of government in their five years in office — which is just how London, Berlin and Paris wanted it.

Something like democracy

By 2014, unease had built up against the process, which had become a symbol for the secretive, undemocratic power plays the EU was supposed to have left behind. The demand for some wider electorate to get involved in picking the Commission president was unstoppable.

That’s when the so-called Spitzenkandidat — leading candidate — emerged. Each European Parliament party group nominated a candidate to be Commission president, with the job going to whichever party won the most MEPs.

By linking the top job in Brussels to the parliamentary election, the hope was to confer democratic, quasi-electoral legitimacy on the Commission president. It didn’t work.

The Socialists, who were controlled by their German bloc, chose German politician Martin Schulz as its candidate.

The EPP had a vote at its congress, in which the Luxembourger politician Jean-Claude Juncker won out over the French former minister Michel Barnier. Again, it was a victory for the Germans. Few doubted that the redoubtable German Christian Democrat machine combined with Merkel’s preference for a German-speaking top man in Brussels ensured an easy win for Juncker.

To pretend that the Spitzenkandidat system can reinvigorate EU democracy is untenable

And from there it was an easy walk into office. The EPP was on a roll, especially in Germany, where election posters for the parliament displayed not Juncker’s face but Merkel’s.

The message was clear. Juncker and Schulz held debates and made every show of turning the contest into a real choice about the future of the EU. But in the end, it was party leaders in the national capitals who had the real say, keeping actual voters as far out of the way as possible.

And the electorate made it clear it understood what was going on. Only 42 percent of EU voters bothered to vote in 2014 for their MEPs and turnout was catastrophic in countries like Slovakia, where nine out of 10 voters stayed at home.

To pretend that the Spitzenkandidat system can reinvigorate EU democracy is untenable. The experiment of using the choice of Commission president as a way of demonstrating EU democracy in action hasn’t worked. The question is, what should replace it?

Denis MacShane is the U.K.’s former minister of Europe. His new book “Brexit, No Exit. Why (in the End) Britain Won’t Leave Europe” is published this month by IB Tauris.