32 Europe The EconomistJune 1st 2019
I
t may notlook impressive, but the Berlaymont building is the
nearest thing the European Union has to a White House. Built on
the site of a former convent on a hill above the centre of Brussels,
the cross-shaped, 14-floor building houses the European Commis-
sion—the union’s executive, the guardian of its treaties and the
sole institution that can initiate European legislation. Unlike the
president of the European Council, the body comprising the 28
leaders of the eumember states, the commission president is
more than a convener. His power (no woman has yet done the job)
rests not in the fleeting politics of national capitals but in Brussels.
It allows its bearer to set the eu’s long-term agenda. The view from
the top of the Berlaymont has a big horizon.
The commission presidency is the most glittering of the jobs up
for grabs in the eu’s big post-election turnover. The process by
which it is allocated has changed. For decades national leaders dic-
tated their choice, but in 2009 the European Parliament obtained
the right to elect the president, and in 2014 came the so-called Spit-
zenkandidatconvention, by which only the designated “lead can-
didate” of a parliamentary group—probably though not necessar-
ily the largest—can take the job. That time Jean-Claude Juncker
owed his majority to the two big groups: his centre-right European
People’s Party (epp) and the Socialists and Democrats. The council
did not expect this, and was bounced into accepting him.
Again, after last week’s European elections, the eppis the larg-
est group. And again the socialists are second. But both suffered
heavy losses. Manfred Weber, the epp’s lead candidate, will need to
win over not just the socialist group but also many liberal and
green parliamentarians. Given his history of cosying up to Viktor
Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, that will be diffi-
cult. In the council he has the support of Angela Merkel, the Ger-
man chancellor, but the Bavarian is strongly opposed by the
French president, Emmanuel Macron, and others, who scorn his
lack of executive experience.
The battle for the commission presidency will be fought on two
fronts. First, it is a power struggle between the council and the par-
liament. meps have gained strength in recent years and were em-
boldened by increased turnout in the election. They fear that if
they do not stand by the Spitzenkandidatprocess, they will lose itandcedepowerback to the council—which has also gained stature
over recent years, thanks to a succession of crisis summits that
have made it the centre of attention.
The second front is the contest between France and Germany,
whose partnership is fraying. Mr Macron wants to break the epp’s
conservative dominance of the euand is forming an alliance to do
so with a bloc of liberal- and socialist-led states and a new, en-
larged liberal group in the parliament. Ahead of a post-election
summit on May 28th, he had lunch with the leaders of Spain, Por-
tugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. The gang disagree on many
things—Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, is horrified at Mr
Macron’s federalist fiscal designs—but are united in their opposi-
tion to Mr Weber, as well as on matters like climate change where
they want the euto do more, faster. They are arrayed against the
epp, which is dominated by Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democratic
Union and is strongest in central and south-eastern Europe. Mr
Macron’s western European gang fears stagnation and opposes Mr
Weber; the eppmost fears disintegration and supports him.
The upshot of these rivalries is that Mr Weber’s chances, though
not negligible, are not great. “He will be shot down,” said one insid-
er ahead of the summit: “whether diplomatically or not remains to
be seen.” That leaves an array of alternative candidates, including
three possible front-runners. Frans Timmermans is a multilingual
Dutch vice-president of the commission who has tackled rule-of-
law infringements. Margrethe Vestager, a Danish liberal, has won
accolades as the eu’s competition commissioner for attacking un-
competitive practices and tax-dodging by American digital giants.
And Michel Barnier is a moderate French conservative who has led
the eu’s Brexit negotiations. Mr Macron name-checked all three as
he arrived at the post-election summit. None is a “winning” lead
candidate. But the Dutchman was the socialists’ lead candidate
whereas Ms Vestager was one of seven leading candidates her
group proposed. The election of one of the three would boost Mr
Macron but all are probably acceptable to Mrs Merkel. Still, the pro-
cess is likely to involve several stages of elimination and could
even see a relatively unknown figure clinch the job.Spitz happens
Whoever gets it, the choice will influence the allocation of the eu’s
other big vacancies: those of European Council president, its “high
representative” for foreign affairs, and the president of the Euro-
pean Central Bank, which is not attached to the eu’s political cycle
but happens also to come up this autumn. Leaders will try to en-
force some geographical and ideological balance. A liberal Nordic
president of the commission like Ms Vestager might complement
a leftish southerner, like Antonio Costa of Portugal, as president of
the council, with a hawkish German ecbpresident to soothe Berlin
and an easterner like Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania as high rep-
resentative. The permutations are almost infinite.
The horse-trading will last well into the autumn, and the eu’s
new five-year political cycle will probably not get properly under
way until early 2020. But various traits of that coming institutional
phase will be become clear in the battle for the big jobs. It will be
marked by an increasingly dysfunctional Franco-German rela-
tionship and growing influence for middling moderate states like
Spain and the Netherlands; by debates about whether the euneeds
a vanguard or should proceed at a common pace; by new tussles
between the institutions; and by a more genuinely politicised
European civic sphere. A new era—more fragmented, more politi-
cal, more fluid—is dawning in Europe. 7Charlemagne And they’re off!
The race for the eu’s big jobs shows what the bloc’s new political era has in store