mobanmarketThe European Council cannot and will not be required to follow the EU’s Spitzenkandidat — or lead candidate — process in choosing the next European Commission president, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipilä told POLITICO.
Under the Spitzenkandidat system, which was first used in the selection of Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014, EU heads of state and government are expected to nominate the lead candidate from the party that wins the most seats in the European Parliament election. The nominee must then be confirmed by a majority of the Parliament.
In this May’s election, as in 2014, the winner is expected to be the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).
But the Spitzenkandidat process is not spelled out in the EU treaties, and the European Council has said previously that it cannot be legally required to follow it.
The Council’s resistance is largely a matter of the legal separation of powers between the EU institutions. Committing in advance to the Spitzenkandidat process would strip the Council of its authority and discretion in choosing a nominee for the EU’s top job.
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But other political families have also come to see the Spitzenkandidat system as unfairly favoring the long-dominant EPP.
Finland’s view is of particular note because it will take over the EU’s rotating presidency on July 1, giving it a central role in coordinating the selection process for all of the top jobs that will come vacant.
Sipilä is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), which has openly rebelled against the Spitzenkandidat system. ALDE has refused to put forward an individual candidate — unlike the EPP, which has nominated German MEP Manfred Weber, and its main center-left rival, the Party of European Socialists (PES), which has put forward European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans. Instead, ALDE says it will propose a slate of candidates, giving the Council a roster of names to pick from if it wants to nominate a Liberal.
“I don’t like this idea about Spitzenkandidats,” Sipilä said in the interview. “I think that in democracy we have to make compromises also. It’s not clear that the biggest party will take this position.”
Historically, Sipilä said, the EPP “took everything, all the positions. I think that this is not good policy. And this is why ALDE — we have decided that we will have a team of politicians which shows that in the liberal party there is a different kind of thinking, and we are from north and south and west and east. And it’s a kind of window about the candidates we have in the ALDE party. And I like this more than nominating our candidate before.”
He added, “We have emphasized in the Council also that this is not binding at all. We have to remember also — I have said it many times in the European Council — I can’t agree that this Spitzenkandidat process binds in any way the European Council. Because it has to be negotiation, compromise.”
The Council’s opposition has put the system in doubt but Weber and the EPP are working diligently to make it politically difficult, if not impossible, for the heads of state and government to break with the process. Weber has already begun campaigning across Europe.
Current election projections, including POLITICO’s, suggest that the EPP will once again control the largest bloc of seats in the new Parliament. With those numbers, and by presenting himself early as the front-runner, Weber and the EPP operatives supporting his campaign hope the Council will see little upside in choosing someone who has not appealed directly to voters.
Sipilä may not be around to help choose the next Commission president. Finnish voters head to the polls for a national election on April 14, and it is unclear if he will return as prime minister.