46 Europe The EconomistFebruary 24th 2018
W
HAT is the best way to enrage a European diplomat? (This is
not an attempt at a joke.) You could suggest that his or her
government pay more into the European Union budget, or accept
a diktat from Brussels to take in more refugees. Urging a speedier
cut in national budget deficits rankles in some countries; pressing
for more defence spending irritates others. Butthis week, at least,
the most reliable method for inducing puce-faced rage in the Brus-
sels diplomatic corps has been to utter the word Spitzenkandida-
ten. It falls upon them like a curse.
This frightening-soundingGerman word translates as “top
candidates”, and refers to a method ofchoosing the president of
the European Commission, perhaps the most powerful job in the
Brussels firmament. It works like this. Before the election to the
European Parliament, the chamber’s political groupings—ag-
glomerations of national parties from across the EU—each nomi-
nates a candidate for the commission post. They agree that they
will approve no one but one ofthose candidates, whichever can
command a majority of the parliament’s seats. The system was
applied, chaotically, for the first time in 2014. After a row with
some national leaders—notably David Cameron, then Britain’s
prime minister—the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP),
which won most seats, engineered the commission job for its
candidate, Jean-Claude Juncker. The parliament is now gunning
to repeat this trick for next year’s European elections.
Why so controversial? For its advocates, this process eases the
EU’s democratic deficit by bestowing on voters indirect power to
select the commission president. European elections tend to cen-
tre on national concerns and fail to excite voters (turnout in 2014
was 43%). Spitzenkandidaten are a step towards turning them into
something worthy of the name. For its detractors, including most
European leaders, the whole business is an illegitimate power
grab by the parliament that undermines elected governments
and possibly breaksEUlaw. It also thins the ranks of candidates
for the commission job, because sitting headsof government will
not turn themselves into lame ducks by declaring an interest six
months before the election.
Leaders point to the EU’s rule book, which gives them the right
to propose candidates for the commission presidency to the par-
liament. That used to mean dealmaking between governmentheads behind closed doors, ensuring that those national govern-
ments remained in charge of the Brussels machinery. But the par-
liament in turn notes that the rules give it the final power of ap-
proval. These tensions will play out when the EU’s 27 leaders
(minus Britain) assemble for a summit in Brussels on February
23rd. They will have to decide whether they have the energy to
take on the parliament next year over institutional arcana.
Why on earth does any of this matter? First, because it exacer-
bates the tensions between the commission’s two roles (it is a sort
of hybrid between an executive and civil service). Mr Juncker
likes to boast that his is a “political commission”. Germany, and
others, see a glaring contradiction between this claim and the
commission’s supposedly impartial role in policing budgets, the
single market and state-aid rules. Neither Angela Merkel, Ger-
many’s chancellor, nor Emmanuel Macron, the French president,
likes the Spitzenkandidatensystem (though Mrs Merkel accepts it).
The commission renders itself impotent if it loses the trust of the
EU’s two most important countries.
The campaign in 2014 was too hasty for genuine political dif-
ferences to emerge between Mr Juncker and his main opponent,
Martin Schulz, a German social democrat (and serial election-los-
er). But next year may well be livelier. What if a Spitzenkandidat
wins on a ticket of tearing up fiscal rules? Misgivings over the pol-
iticisation of the commission will have been heightened by Mr
Juncker’s decision this week to appoint Martin Selmayr, his
scheming chief of staff, as secretary-general of the commission: a
powerful bureacratic job for a divisive figure.Macron v the blob
Mrs Merkel, whose Christian Democratic Union is the largest
member of the EPP, does not seem up for the fight. But for Mr Mac-
ron the European Parliament’s parties are as ripe for disruption as
the ones he blew up athome last year. The EPP, he notes acidly, is
supposed to be the home of European Christian democracy yet
finds space for heathens like Silvio Berlusconi and Viktor Orban.
(You might make a similar case for the liberal ALDE group, which
bundles Euro-federalists with deep sceptics while flirting with It-
aly’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement.) These groups, he
believes, warp Europe’s political currents rather than channel
them. By strengthening their grip on the EU’s machinery, Spitzen-
kandidatenundermine European democracy. Mr Macron has
pointedly refused to align his La République en Marche party
with any of the parliament’s groupings.
For some, these arguments are enough to ditch the whole idea
and revert to the secretive methods of the past. But Mr Macron’s
point is different. If you want genuinely European elections, he
argues, go the whole hog. Draw up Europe-wide constituencies,
so that voters in Portugal choose from the same slate of candi-
dates asthose in Lithuania. Candidates for the commission job
could head those tickets, rather than being chosen in opaque
fashion by meaningless political groupings.
Many will balk at such a radical reinvention. Mr Macron’s
“transnational list” proposal was shot down by the European Par-
liament itself two weeksago. But his ideas have the virtue of con-
sistency. Spitzenkandidatenare a thin form ofEUdemocracy, the
margarine à la bruxelloiseto Mr Macron’s full-fat European butter.
Yet as in 2014, when the parliament’s manoeuvring caught gov-
ernments napping, its very European coup stands little chance of
being overturned next year. As one diplomat sighs, “We might
end up having to accept it one way or the other.” 7A very European coup
Who runs the EU? The European Parliament thinks it has the answerCharlemagne