Europe’s conservatives face a vexing choice in the aftermath of last month’s European election.
The European People’s Party — the powerful alliance of the Continent’s center-right forces — can either rescue the lead candidate system it has long championed for choosing the president of the European Commission, or it can put one of its own as head of the EU executive.
It can’t do both.
It’s a dilemma entirely of the party’s own making.
The problem started when the group selected Manfred Weber as its Spitzenkandidat, even though the EPP’s leadership knew he would almost surely be unacceptable to the European Council, where heavyweight members such as French President Emmanuel Macron oppose him outright and several others are lukewarm, at best, about his leadership potential.
Weber’s selection as president would signal a complete capitulation by the Council to the Parliament in choosing the Commission president.
With a consensus to nominate Weber implausible in the Council, the EPP finds itself in an awkward position. Does it ditch Weber and support a Spitzenkandidat from another party or does it agree to substitute another EPP politician who was not a Spitzenkandidat in place of Weber — thereby securing the top job but risking the system’s credibility.
How did the EPP get into this mess?
The Spitzenkandidat system, after all, is not set in stone. It is not even provided for in the EU treaties. The treaty process for selecting the Commission president simply requires that the Council “take into account” the European Parliament election results when proposing a candidate for Commission chief, and that the nominee must be able to win the backing of a majority in the Parliament. In other words, the treaty envisions the selection of the Commission president as a compromise between the Council and the Parliament.
When Parliament launched the Spitzenkandidat process five years ago, however, its leaders sought to leverage its power to approve the Council’s candidate.
Lead candidates Ska Keller, Margrethe Vestager, Frans Timmermans and Manfred Weber | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images
In short, the Parliament’s message to the Council was: You can nominate whomever you want, but the only person we will approve is the Spitzenkandidat of the party that won the most seats in the election. While many critics saw this as a brazen power grab, the Parliament justified the process as a means to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the EU by, supposedly, letting the voters decide who would become Commission president.
Whatever one thinks of the Spitzenkandidat process, it is important to recognize that Parliament’s success in using the process the last time, in 2014, depended on the fact that the lead candidate of the largest party, the EPP’s Jean-Claude Juncker, was acceptable to the Council.
To be sure, pressure from the Parliament and the media helps explain why eventually Angela Merkel and all but two heads of government overcame their misgivings about the Spitzenkandidat process and came out in support of Juncker. But Juncker became president not simply because the Parliament strong-armed the Council, but also because he was politically acceptable to the Council.
As a longtime prime minister of Luxembourg and former president of the Eurogroup, Juncker was a consummate Council insider. Also, as a moderate Christian Democrat, he was able to win support from across the political spectrum in the Council.
Weber enjoys no such support in the Council. He is a dedicated European Parliament man whose career took him straight from the Landtag in Bavaria to Strasbourg and Brussels. He has no experience in national government, and his selection as president would signal a complete capitulation by the Council to the Parliament in choosing the Commission president.
Moreover, as leader of the EPP group in the Parliament, Weber spent years shielding Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, a fellow EPP member, from EU criticism — even as Orbán consolidated a hybrid authoritarian regime, cracked down on the media and restricted academic freedom.
Those who want to see the Spitzenkandidaten system survive should hope that one of the other candidates — Vestager or Timmermans — comes out on top.
Despite Weber’s recent efforts to distance himself from Orbán, he cannot shake off his reputation as an enabler of autocracy. That will make him an unacceptable choice for several liberal and socialist governments in the Council. Indeed, Macron has reached out to other heads of government, including Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, to form a coalition to block Weber.
So with Weber’s nomination likely doomed, the EPP faces a choice.
If it chooses to defend the Spitzenkandidat system, it would have to back a Spitzenkandidat from one of the other parties, such as the Liberals’ Margrethe Vestager or the Socialists’ Frans Timmermans.
This would be feasible. Though it was generally expected that the Spitzenkandidat from the largest party would become president, strictly speaking the process simply calls for a Spitzenkandidat who can command majority support in the Parliament to be selected.
Manfred Weber, left, shakes hands with Frans Timmermans as current European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker watches on | Patrick Seeger/EPA
Given that forming a majority in the Parliament will require a coalition between the EPP, the Socialists and the Liberals (or possibly the Greens), the EPP could still defend the Spitzenkandidat process by backing one of their coalition partners’ candidates for the top job. As compensation for conceding on Weber, they might demand that an EPP leader be selected as president of the European Council.
The party’s other option is to agree on another EPP politician — such as Frenchman and lead Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, Lithuania’s Dalia Grybauskaitė, or Bulgarian World Bank head Kristalina Georgieva — to take charge of the Commission. The cost, of course, would be the end of the Spitzenkandidat process.
Those who want to see the Spitzenkandidaten system survive should hope that one of the other candidates — Vestager or Timmermans — comes out on top.
It’s an outcome that would offer a salutary lesson and strengthen EU democracy in the long run: Don’t nominate a partisan loyalist with a track record of appeasing autocrats for a top EU job.
R. Daniel Kelemen is professor of political science and law and Jean Monnet chair in European Union politics at Rutgers University.