© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

In an unprecedented move, the European Parliament’s internal market and industry committees overwhelmingly voted on Thursday to reject Sylvie Goulard, the French nominee, to become the next EU internal market commissioner. As a result, the commission of incoming president Ursula von der Leyen will not start on November 1 as planned—and there is even speculation in some quarters she may never start.

Though the rejection is ostensibly over potential ethics issues during her time as an MEP, it has more to do with the parliament’s unfinished business from its battle with French President Emmanuel Macron this summer. Though the Parliament warned they would only confirm one of the official election candidates to become European Commission president, Macron disregarded their warnings and refused to honor their system for electing the commission president. (According to the EU treaties, Macron had every right to do so, as they stipulate that the European Council—the group of heads of governments—picks the commission president.)

Macron instead put forward Ursula von der Leyen, the German defense minister, who was not a candidate during the EU elections in May. In the end the parliament backed down from its threats and confirmed her by just nine votes. But she only made it across the line because of support from far-right parties in Hungary and Poland.

“Resentment? Pettiness?”

Macron may have thought he was out of the woods—that the parliament was all bark and no bite. But yesterday MEPs, led by rejected center-right Spitzenkandidat Manfred Weber, took their delayed revenge.

Macron was left stunned. “I need to understand what played out,” he said at a press conference. “Resentment? Pettiness?”

He said von der Leyen had assured him Goulard would pass, and that she had been personally told this by center-right EPP leader Weber and center-left S&D leader Iratxe Garcia Perez. But Weber and Garcia Perez deny having any such conversation with von der Leyen, who has not responded to Macron’s accusation.

Macron’s assertion that this has more to do with institutional politics than Goulard’s qualifications is shared by most people in Brussels. The EPP itself made this more than obvious when it accidentally sent out a tweet yesterday before the vote with a WhatsApp conversation in the background saying, “Guys we are going to kill her in the vote later but do not say.” The tweet has since been deleted.

The stated reason for rejecting Goulard, a close ally of Macron, is allegations that she used a European Parliament assistant for domestic political work while she was an MEP in 2009. There was also discontent over the fact that while she was an MEP she was receiving $10,000 a month from a US consultancy firm for whom she appears to have done little work.

But this explanation doesn’t quite hold water. Though it might be distasteful, there is nothing illegal about having a second job as an MEP and Goulard fully disclosed what she was earning. Almost a third of MEPs have such second jobs, according to public data, with many earning far more than Goulard.

As for the payment scandal, though she has been questioned by investigators there has been no formal investigation launched against her. After a tough first round of grilling she promised MEPs that she would resign if she was ever found guilty of improperly using her MEP funds. There were far more serious doubts about the ethics and competence of other nominees, but they sailed through.

MEPs also had objections to her very broad portfolio, but in truth it is not that much bigger than in previous commissions.

Von der Leyen Is in Trouble, Again

Every five years, these confirmation hearings are often more about political games than the actual competencies of the nominees. The European Parliament wants to flex its muscles and show it can’t be pushed around by the other EU institutions, so it always rejects at least one nominee. But this year, after suffering such a humiliating climb-down in July, it had more to prove than normal.

The parliament had already rejected two Eastern European nominees even before their hearings—from Hungary and Romania. They were deemed by the legal affairs committee to have conflicts of interest. Given that the two governments who nominated them are political pariahs accused of violating the rule of law, the rejections were not that surprising.

The Hungarian was from the EPP, and the Romanian was from S&D. Those two groups then focused their attention on Goulard and Macron’s Renew Europe group of liberals, the third largest in the parliament.

Clearly, the parliament was not content with just catching the usual Eastern European small fish. They wanted a big fish to show Macron they can’t be trifled with—and that big fish was Goulard. She is only the second nominee to ever be rejected from a Western European country; the first being Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione in 2004 who was voted down for his homophobic views.

Lacking a Majority

This wasn’t just a humiliation for Macron, it has also critically wounded von der Leyen. Her own EPP group, which is led by Weber, has very publicly and ostentatiously disobeyed her. They also apparently disregarded an intervention by Angela Merkel, who urged them not to do anything that would delay the new commission’s start date on November 1—a crucial time with Brexit scheduled for October 31.

That the EPP ignored both of these women shows that von der Leyen does not command a majority in the parliament. This was always the worry with her very slim confirmation victory. Like Goulard, von der Leyen has found herself stuck in the middle of an institutional power battle she did not start. And some people in Brussels are questioning whether she can survive.

Von der Leyen, after all, has only passed one out of two confirmation votes. She must still be confirmed by the parliament again, along with her college of 28 commissioners. Under the EU treaties a commission cannot start work until it has been approved by the parliament. If there is no majority for any commission led by von der Leyen, then a new president would have to be found.

With the collapse of the Romanian government this week delaying a new nominee from Bucharest, there is now no prospect of von der Leyen’s commission being approved before the intended November 1 start date. Von der Leyen tacitly admitted this herself in a statement following Goulard’s rejection.

A delay itself is not a mortal blow, and indeed von der Leyen may be breathing a sigh of relief that there is now no risk her first day will be occupied by a no-deal Brexit. But if she cannot get a confirmation for her college by December 1, people will start asking whether they need to start over with a new president.

It’s a road few want to go down, and the parliament is likely to be content having taken their revenge against Macron. But MEPs may have kicked off a tit-for-tat process that could snowball out of control.

The post Weber’s Revenge appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

After a traumatic two months of fighting between the European Union’s institutions and political groups, it all came to an end last night. The European Parliament voted to confirm German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen as the next President of the European Commission – but by a margin of just nine votes.

The result was uncertain right until the last moment, with MEPs across the political spectrum still angry that the prime ministers of the European Council had ignored the Spitzenkandidat system of injecting democracy by running presidential candidates in the EU election. The national leaders chose non-candidate Von der Leyen at a marathon Brussels summit two weeks ago. The center-left Socialists & Democrats group was particularly angry because their Spitzenkandidat, Frans Timmermans, was rejected by a coalition of right-wing and center-right EU leaders.

So when the S&D announced two hours before the vote that it was joining the center-right EPP and the Liberal Renew Europe in endorsing her, it was assumed she would pass by a healthy majority. But this was a secret ballot, and things did not go as planned.

A sizable number of MEPs in those three centrist groups – the three largest in the Parliament with 443 sets between them – must have voted against her. Because she ended up with just 383 votes.

Right-Wing Support

Worst still, the pre-announced voting intentions of populist parties not in those groups means the number of pro-European centrists that voted for her was even lower still. The 14 MEPs in Italy’s governing Five Star Movement, 26 MEPs in Poland’s governing Law and Justice, and 13 MEPs in Hungary’s governing Fidesz all said they voted for her.

The reason is that their three prime ministers had supported her nomination at the European Council Summit, after fiercely opposing the nomination of Timmermans, who as Commission Vice President has opened punishment procedures against Poland and Hungary for rule of law violations. Following that summit, Orban bragged in Hungary that he and his illiberal allies had “won” the summit by blocking Timmermans and choosing Von der Leyen.

That Europe’s right-wing populist forces were rooting for Von der Leyen may seem odd, given she is an avowed federalist who wants to see a “United States of Europe” and ever-closer union. Indeed, on paper there is little for them to like about her. During her speech to the Parliament yesterday she said she would continue the Commission’s efforts to go after those EU countries where the rule of law violations are occurring, though she would not mention Poland and Hungary by name.

And yet, she will know that she owes her Commission presidency to the governing parties of Poland and Hungary – not just for her appointment in the Council, but also for her confirmation in the Parliament.

Asked about that uncomfortable reality in a press conference following her confirmation vote, she did not confront the implications head on.

“I don’t know who voted for me,” she told journalists. “I know it was very difficult to achieve a majority. But I think today the most important question was giving a speech which reflected my convictions, a pro-European speech, but one in which there was an attempt to find a solution to the divisions that exist between West and East.”

“A majority’s a majority in politics,” she added. “I didn’t have a majority when I came here two weeks ago, people didn’t know me. And as I can understand, there’s a great deal of resentment surrounding the Spitzenkandidat process.”

But the result gives credence to an idea put forward by the Greens, fresh off an election victory in May, that Von der Leyen will owe her commission presidency to the right-wing populists. Orban himself is likely to trumpet the parliament vote result in Hungary as another win for his party, as he did after the Council summit. Whether or not the Commission president actually feels beholden to him, the impression will be there.

Von Der Leyen’s backers were at pains last night to stress that the historic opposition to her in the Parliament was not about her as a politician but rather about the process in which she was appointed – something for which she bears no guilt. On this, they are correct. Indeed, some of the MEPs who voted against her said as they were leaving the chamber that despite their vote, they liked her very much. It was about the principle of defending the integrity of the European Parliament, which the Council had insulted by ignoring the Spitzenkandidaten.

Spitzenkandidat No More

One thing that everyone could agree on last night was that they were glad the ordeal is over. But the Parliament has emerged badly weakened. And in an act of revenge, they have weakened Von der Leyen as she starts her term.

One thing is clear – the Spitzenkandidat system for allowing voters a say in choosing the Commission President is dead.

Von der Leyen has promised the Parliament she will work to develop a new system for democratically selecting the Commission president in time for the next EU election in 2024. She said it will incorporate transnational lists, something pushed for by French President Emmanuel Macron but rejected by her center-right EPP Group in a European Parliament vote last year.

In the end, it will not be her decision to make. That will be up to the 28 national leaders of the EU, who under the treaties retain the sole right to nominate a Commission President. They never signed up to the Spitzenkandidat system; it was an invention of the European Parliament that wasn’t grounded in law. But they gave in to pressure in following it the first time it was used in 2014, to appoint EPP candidate Jean-Claude Juncker.

With Macron strongly opposed to the system this time around, the Parliament and Council never reached an agreement before the election on whether to use it. The Parliament decided to go ahead and run it anyway, thinking they could pressure the Council again as they did in 2014. It didn’t work out that way, and the failure of communication between EU institutions resulted in the ugly process that has played out over the past two months.

Now, the EU has a Commission president who is starting to look less like a compromise candidate and more like a compromised candidate. The Parliament has been left humiliated and angry, while the Commission has been left with a leader who risks being seen as illegitimate. In time, Von der Leyen’s historically narrow confirmation may become but a distant memory. But for now, it has exposed some of the EU’s worst decision-making flaws at a time when it can least afford such a blow to its reputation.

The post Von der Leyen’s in and the Spitzenkandidat’s Dead appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

The 28 national leaders in the European Council have made their choice for the next European Commission president: German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen. But she will still need to be approved by the European Parliament. And with MEPs angry over the Spitzenkandidat process being abandoned, this is very much in doubt.

The choice came after three straight days of protracted and tense negotiations. The process of appointing the EU’s top jobs for the next five-year term was made more complicated by the fractured result of May’s European Parliament election. For the first time, the main center-right and center-left political groups, the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Party of European Socialists (PES), did not win enough seats to form a majority between them. That complicated the usual division of the spoils between Europe’s two main blocs.

The conflict was not only political, it was also institutional. For the second time, the so-called “Spitzenkandidat process“ was used in this year’s European elections—a system by which the political groups put forward lead candidates for Commission President ahead of the election. Those candidates campaigned across Europe and held debates with each other. The idea was to give voters a choice, with the candidate who was able to garner a majority in the European Parliament getting the job.

But the European Council, the body of the EU’s 28 national leaders, has never been a fan of this system. It takes power away from them and hands it over to the European Parliament. When it was used for the first time in 2014, it was strongly opposed by British Prime Minister David Cameron. But given the UK’s lack of influence in the EU, Cameron’s vote against Juncker was simply ignored. This time around, it was French President Emmanuel Macron who came out strongly against the system. He was even able to convince the ALDE group of Liberals in the European Parliament to come out against it also, as a condition for him taking his En Marche MEPs into an alliance with them.

An Idle Threat?

A majority of MEPs in the European Parliament had threatened to reject anyone nominated by the council who was not a Spitzenkandidat during the campaign, and this threat was reaffirmed in statements from the main groups shortly after the election.

One of the elements that caused the delay in the council’s deliberations (this was in fact the third summit to discuss the issue held since the elections) was the question among EU leaders over whether the parliament would make good on its threat. For most of the negotiations on Sunday and Monday the leaders discussed a package devised by Merkel and Macron that would see Frans Timmermans, the candidate of the PES, become Commission President. But moderate EPP leaders such as Ireland’s Leo Varadkar opposed Timmermans—together with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whose Fidesz party is presently suspended by the EPP, and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki—demanding that the position stay under EPP control. It is a sign of Merkel’s waning power that she was not able to contain this rebellion within her political family.

And so, the council moved on to other ideas. According to EU sources, it was Macron who first suggested Ursula von der Leyen as a compromise, an idea which was quickly embraced by Hungary and Poland. As part of the package, the Council Presidency will pass from the EPP to the Liberals with Belgium’s Charles Michel and Christine Lagarde, a center-right former French finance minister and current head of the International Monetary Fund, will become the new president of the European Central Bank.

Though the European Parliament President is usually the fifth job in the horse-trading mix, this year the council leaders announced they would graciously let MEPs decide for themselves who they would like to be their president. It was perhaps a gesture meant to mollify the anticipated anger of MEPs at having the Spitzenkandidat system killed.

But even this gesture was undermined when, during her press conference, Angela Merkel said she “advised” the parliament to choose a center-left MEP to give political balance. The parliament dutifully obliged today, with center-right and center-left MEPs voting to confirm Italian Social Democrat David Sassoli as Parliament President for the next half-term.

The outcome was a foregone conclusion from the start, because the EPP’s Commission President nominee Manfred Weber withdrew from the parliament race yesterday, leaving the EPP with no candidate. This is the same outcome as in 2014, when German Social Democrat Martin Schulz was made president for the first half of the last term.

The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the ball is now in the parliament’s court. Will it make good on its threats, or back down? The latter would result in a significant loss of its credibility as an institution. Why should anyone believe threats the parliamentarians make in the future?

EPP MEPs are sure to vote to confirm von der Leyen, along with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, dominated by the Polish. The Liberals are also likely to back the package. But that is not enough for a majority. If the PES teams with the far-left GUE group and the Greens to vote no, combined with the presumed no votes of the euroskeptic and far-right MEPs, this would be enough to reject von der Leyen.

Promises, Promises

Outgoing Council President Donald Tusk will travel to Strasbourg on Thursday, and he will be in damage control mode. He will have to offer a concession to MEPs in exchange for them swallowing their pride and conceding defeat on the Spitzenkandidat system. That could possibly be done by promising that a new system for democratically choosing the EU Commission President will be invented before the next EU elections in 2021.

Perhaps they will take up Macron’s idea of establishing trans-national lists, putting the presidential candidates on the ballots across Europe. The existing system mirrors parliamentary democracies, where a vote for the political group implies a vote for that group’s leader.

The confirmation vote is set to take place at the second parliament plenary session in Strasbourg in mid-July. There will be intensive talks among MEPs until then to discuss how to respond to this institutional insult.

The post Institutional War appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Piroschka Van De Wouw

“There is no majority in the European Council for any of the Spitzenkandidaten,” declared German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the end of this week’s summit of 28 national EU leaders in Brussels. “I don’t see that I can change this assessment.”

Whether or not this was the death knell for the prospects of Manfred Weber, the nominee of Merkel’s center-right European People’s Party (EPP) to become European Commission President, depends on who you ask. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that after this week’s summit it is certain that neither Weber nor his social democratic challenger Frans Timmermans, the nominee of the center-left PES group, will be Commission President.

Orbán is no fan of either men because of their criticism of his rule of law violations (from the latter much earlier than the former). But his assessment was echoed by other EU leaders including Slovakian Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, who said, “None of them have a majority, and I don’t believe they will have a majority next week.”

The most prominent voice against the process was French President Emmanuel Macron. “It is clear there’s no majority in the Parliament to support the EPP,” he said after the summit. “Then President Tusk said there was no clear majority for any Spitzenkandidat in the Council. Accordingly, this system was not considered to be the valid one, like I’ve said constantly, to appoint the president of the European Commission.”

What Next for Top Jobs?

The Spitzenkandidaten are the candidates for Commission President put up by the European political groups ahead of the election. In addition to Weber and Timmermans, there is the EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager from Denmark representing the third-largest group, the Liberals (which Macron and his LREM party have recently joined).

The system was used for the first time in the last European elections in 2014, when Jean-Claude Juncker was the EPP candidate. The idea is to make the EU’s executive branch more democratic, by having voters indirectly choose the Commission President. The party that can command a majority of seats in the parliament has its candidate become Commission President. But the process has been marred by difficulty in getting the word out to citizens that it even exists. Most voters do not know the names of the three main Spitzenkandidaten.

The other problem is that the system is not laid down in any law, and technically it is still up to the Council of 28 national leaders to appoint the president. But, the parliament can block their appointment by majority vote. And MEPs have threatened to do so if the council appoints a non-Spitzen.

Macron bristled in his final press conference to accusations that he is trying to stymie EU democracy by keeping the choice over Commission president in “smoke-filled backrooms” of the European Council of 28 national leaders.

“The treaties [giving the European Council this power] were put to people and approved,” he said. “Now we hear a tune that the Council should no longer use its powers. But all the people in the Council were elected and have as much legitimacy to make these decisions.” He noted that his idea to have the president selected by transnational lists was rejected by the EPP, because they know the current system benefits them as the largest party.

All In the Mix

There are other positions to fill as well—European Council President, High Representative for Foreign Affairs, European Parliament President and European Central Bank President. All of them are in the mix in these negotiations, but the big prize is the Commission presidency. And the EPP is insisting it should be theirs. In the past, all of these “top jobs” have been chosen at once – though there is no requirement to do so.

At the end of the summit, it was clear that many leaders think it is time to broaden the search beyond the list of Spitzenkandidaten. They would prefer it to be one of their own, a current or former national leader. Angela Merkel’s name has continually come up, though she shot down the suggestion for the umpteenth time when it was put to her at her press conference. Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel has been suggested for Council President.

But the most likely person to get the role continues to be Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator. He was not a Spitzenkandidat, but he is a member of the EPP and seemed to be running a stealth campaign ahead of the election. What remains to be seen is whether the parliament would confirm a non-Spitzenkandidat.

Council President Donald Tusk yesterday called an extraordinary summit for June 30, so all of the leaders will come back to Brussels a week from now to try again for an agreement. But it is unclear how they will be any closer to deciding by then.

Macron insisted that they must, because the issue needs to be settled before July 2, when the new European Parliament meets for the first time in Strasbourg and new presidents of the parliament and the European Central Bank must be chosen. “We’ve seen in the past that any time we lag or waste time, it only makes it more difficult to make a decision,” the French president warned.

Climate Failure

The leaders also failed to take a decision on a plan to decarbonize the EU by 2050. This was the last chance for the EU to adopt the target ahead of a UN conference of the parties to the Paris Agreement in New York in September. The UN secretary general had written to the leaders urging them not to come to the summit empty-handed, saying the commitment for the EU to increase ambition was needed to get other countries to also strengthen their emissions reduction targets.

The target needs to be unanimously agreed by all EU countries. In recent weeks support for the target was building, with Merkel flipping on her initial hesitation and backing the target last week. But in the end, four countries still opposed the target this week. Poland was in the lead with wielding the veto, followed by Hungary, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. They objected to the commitment to decarbonization by a specific date, preferring instead a more vague time commitment.

The summit’s final conclusions say that the EU will “ensure a transition to a climate neutral EU ‘in line with the Paris Agreement’”—removing a reference in the original draft to the specific target date of 2050.

The EU could still adopt the 2050 target at its next European Council summit in October, but this would be after the September climate summit in New York and therefor unlikely to make a difference.

As the national leaders gave their final press conferences, there was a sense of frustration over the fact that so little had been accomplished. And they were certainly even more frustrated that they will have to come back to Brussels in just a week.

The post Failure in Brussels appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

In May 2014, the European Parliament in Brussels was the scene of some must-see TV. The European Broadcasting Union, mostly known for organizing the Eurovision song contest, held a televised debate between the five people running to be the next European Commission president.

The parliament’s plenary chamber was turned into a dramatic TV set, complete with changing lighting and suspenseful music. The Brussels bubble was enthralled. But even though the debate aired on TV stations across Europe, the ratings were dismal. This led people to ask the fabled “tree in the forest” question—if a presidential election takes place, but nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

The truth is that even among the EU politics wonks in the audience, there was skepticism about whether one of these people would actually become the next EU Commission president. That’s because the parliament’s political groups were essentially holding this contest without getting permission from the EU’s national leaders, who are the ones who appoint the head of the commission.

But in the end, one of those people did end up becoming president: Jean-Claude Juncker, the candidate of Angela Merkel’s center-right European People’s Party (EPP). This improbable outcome was the result of shrewd political manipulation by Juncker’s right-hand man, some might say puppet master, Martin Selmayr.

Five years on, here we go again. The contest is shaping up, and the parliament has sworn it will not confirm any candidate who was not put forward by one of the European parties. But many are skeptical that one of these so-called Spitzenkandidaten (“lead candidate”) will once again become president. Even though they were proved wrong last time, this time around the nay-sayers have more cause for their incredulity.

Spitzenkandidat’s Birth

The whole exercise has less to do with European democracy than it does with EU institutional power games.

The idea was first devised 15 years ago, by the people drafting the European Constitution. That charter eventually became the Lisbon Treaty, passed in 2009, and a nebulous phrase regarding the selection of Commission president survived: the 28 national leaders of the EU will select the Commission president by “taking into account” the result of the European elections.

The European Parliament insists this means that the leaders must select the candidate of the political group that won the most seats in the election, or the one that can get a majority vote in the parliament. Last time around, it was the EPP that received the most votes and so, under a procedure similar to national parliamentary democracies, its candidate, Juncker, got first crack at trying to form a majority. That he did, by getting the votes of MEPs from the other two main parties, the center-left Party of European Socialists (PES) and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE).

The national EU leaders didn’t accept the legitimacy of what became known as the spitzenkandidat system, from the German word for top or lead candidate. But they never did anything early on to stop the process from going ahead, much to the annoyance of then-British Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned the leaders the process was going to become an unstoppable freight train unless they clearly rejected it early in 2014.

Cameron was right. By the time the election was over, Selmayr was able to convince his friends in the German media to launch a full-scale pressure campaign on Merkel to accept Juncker as the democratically-elected president of Europe. Never mind the fact that most voters had no idea the contest was even happening, and even political elites had laughed it off as a bizarre experiment. Merkel felt the pressure, and in turn strong-armed other EU leaders to accept the result. Only Cameron and Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán voted against confirming Juncker.

In February 2018, the EU’s national leaders again said they do not recognize the legitimacy of the spitzenkandidat system. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, always good for a cryptic tweet, warned “don’t count your spitzens before they’re hatched”.

Lackluster Candidates

The parties have again chosen their candidates now. In 2014 they included two former prime ministers (Luxembourg’s Juncker and Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt for the Liberals), one current prime minister (Greece’s Alexis Tsipras for far-left GUE), and a parliament president (Martin Schulz for the PES, who later went on to lead the SPD’s failed election campaign to be chancellor of Germany).

This time is quite different. The EPP was the only party to hold a primary campaign to select its nominee, and in what many considered a “backroom deal,” they rejected the dynamic former Finnish Prime minister Alex Stubb in favour of the mild-mannered EPP group leader Manfred Weber, largely unknown outside the Brussels bubble (and not very known within it either).

PES failed to hold a primary contest and anointed the only man interested in the job, the current Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, who is relatively well-known on the European stage for taking on Hungary and Poland for their rule of law violations.

The Liberal ALDE group has so far refused to put forward any candidate at all. That’s because French President Emmanuel Macron has come out strongly against the spitzenkandidat system, and the Liberals are hoping to woo him into placing his En Marche party within their group. They are waiting to see what the lay of the land is in February before deciding whether to put forward a candidate.

The euroskeptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, formed by Cameron in 2009 by uniting his Conservatives with the strongly nationalist Polish PiS party, refused to participate in the process in 2014 because they viewed it as a further attempt at forming an EU super-state. But with the Brits on the way out and the future of the group unclear, the Poles have chosen to put forward Czech MEP Jan Zahradil as the ECR’s candidate. The Greens have put forward two candidates, Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout and German MEP Ska Keller. GUE, the far-left political group that put forward Tsipras last time, has not yet decided whether to participate.

Watch Out for Barnier

Out of all the candidates, the only one with significant political stature is Timmermans, a prominent politician in the Netherlands who has some clout on the Europeans stage. But given the social democrats’ waning political fortunes, it is doubtful that a PES candidate could become Commission president. Right now it looks like the PES could come third or even fourth in May’s election. Given that there are currently only three center-left governments in Europe (in Spain, Portugal, and Slovakia, with Sweden’s government set to fall any moment), it would be bizarre for the EU Commission president to be from the center-left.

Indeed, the betting money in Brussels right now is on a man who is not one of the candidates—the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. He is center-right but was unable to enter the EPP nomination contest because his current job is not yet over. But don’t be surprised if he is put forward by EU leaders following the European election, if they choose to disregard the spitzenkandidat process. The big question will then be whether the European Parliament will carry through on its threat to reject any president who was not a candidate.

The underwhelming nature of the candidates so far could mean that ALDE has everything to play for when the liberals make their decision on a candidate in February. And much will depend on Macron’s political fortunes.

When he first came out against the process in early 2018, Macron’s voice carried some weight. His En Marche party, having just won a majority in the French parliament, was expected to win many seats in the European Parliament, too. But now, with the yellow vest movements having damaged his political power both domestically and internationally, Macron may not have the political capital to spend on a bareknuckle fight against the winning spitzenkandidat.

A Damp Squib in 2019

Macron’s big issue with the system is that he views it as an EPP-stitch up. The center-right was certain to win the largest number of seats in 2014, and the center-right designers of the system knew that. They are also almost certain to win the most seats this time, although by a less crushing margin than in 2014.

Macron has proposed that the European elections be fought on ideological grounds, with the centrist pro-EU parties rallying around a single platform against the anti-EU populists—to give European voters a clear choice. It is still possible that the ALDE candidate could emerge as such a de-facto pro-EU candidate, either before or after the election. One name that has been bandied about as someone who could deliver that message convincingly and engagingly to the public is Margrethe Vestager, the Danish EU Commissioner for competition.

Because it is not enshrined in law, the spitzenkandidat process is only as strong as the political groups make it. On the current path, the process is very likely to be a damp squib in 2019. Without Selmayr’s aggressive support, the second time around could also be the last for this democratic experiment.

That is, unless ALDE delivers a surprise in February.

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