Europe | Charlemagne

Who will run Europe?

The messy struggle to find a new president of the European Commission

THE deceit of the European election was summed up by posters around the continent: “Use your power. Choose who is in charge of Europe”. The votes were cast. People used their power to kick governments by supporting parties of the far right and left. But they did not choose who would run Europe. The European Union is too complex to be run by any one body or person. Even the choice of a new president of the European Commission, the EU’s civil service, will take weeks if not months to be decided.

The European Parliament had hoped to inject direct democracy into the system by turning the elections into a contest for a sort of prime minister. Spitzenkandidaten, German for “leading candidates”, were chosen to represent the main multinational party groups. The candidate of the biggest group, it was argued, should become president of the commission. At its heart, the innovation was a power-grab by the parliament, trying to take from elected leaders the right to pick the commission president.

The experiment flopped. The Spitzenkandidaten made little impact on the campaign, which remained a collection of 28 national contests (except, perhaps, in Germany and Austria). The great “duel” between two main candidates—Jean-Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg and champion of the centre-right, and Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat and president of the European Parliament—turned into a series of bloodless discussions about the need for more Europe.

The parliament claimed credit for arresting the decline in voter turnout, though the rate rose by just a tenth of a point over the 43% in 2009. And when early results pointed to a victory by Mr Juncker’s European People’s Party (EPP), Mr Schulz, chief advocate of the Spitzenkandidaten concept, took the best part of two days to accept defeat. Even so, his Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group agreed only that Mr Juncker should be first to try winning a majority, not that he should run the commission. That leaves the option for Mr Schulz, or indeed Guy Verhofstadt, the candidate of the Liberal ALDE group, to try their luck should Mr Juncker fail.

Each set his own conditions for an alliance with Mr Juncker. One consequence of the rise of radical parties is that the EPP and S&D must form a German-style grand coalition to secure the 376 votes needed for the parliament to “elect” the commission president. The deepest political dividing line in Europe now is less between left and right than between pro- and anti-EU forces.

Mr Juncker wanted a quick endorsement by Europe’s leaders, who held a European Council dinner on May 27th, but they are not keen to give up their prerogative. The leaders of Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Romania and, to a lesser extent, France, lined up behind him, even though many hailed from the centre-left. One reason is that they see Mr Juncker as the most “social” of Christian Democrats; he advocates a European minimum wage. Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, led the naysayers, who included his colleagues from Sweden, the Netherlands and Hungary. Their objections are both of principle (the parliament should not dictate terms to the European Council) and of personality (Mr Juncker embodies old-style federalism).

As so often, the choice comes down to what the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, wants. And as so often, she kept her options open. Although she endorsed Mr Juncker as the EPP’s Spitzenkandidat, she made clear the field was wide open. Mr Juncker would make a fine commission president, she said, but so would others. She drew a distinction between her roles in the EPP and in the European Council, which might create space for another conservative candidate: perhaps Jyrki Katainen of Finland or Enda Kenny of Ireland. But the chances of a more adventurous choice, such as Christine Lagarde, the French IMF boss, seem small.

Mrs Merkel is plainly discomfited. She risks being criticised at home for backing away from the democratic promise to voters, but worries that a wrong step could push Britain closer to the exit. The chancellor is playing for time to seek a bargain that might satisfy all. The job of commission president would be part of a “broad tableau” of Brussels jobs. These include a new president of the European Council, key jobs in the commission, president of the Eurogroup (the euro zone’s finance ministers) and high representative for foreign policy. Some of these would have to go to S&D figures and at least one woman (and an easterner). The commission president would also have to fit with a new set of priorities to respond to rising anti-EU sentiment.

Mrs Merkel no doubt hopes time will provide a solution. Maybe Mr Cameron will drop his opposition to Mr Juncker in exchange for a plum job for a British commissioner; maybe the French will accept an alternative candidate if they secure a promise to “reorient” EU policy away from austerity; perhaps the European Parliament’s fragile consensus will fall apart as factions jostle for power and influence.

Supersized Belgium

Expect a quintessentially European muddle. As in “Alice in Wonderland”, everybody has won and all must have prizes. Far from taking a bold step towards the United States of Europe, the EU might end up as a bigger version of Belgium, a polity so messy that in December 2011 it was left without a proper government for 541 days as one faction after another failed to form a coalition (a fate Belgium may now be in for again after its national election, held on the same day as the European ones). As in Belgium, the choice of the voter only vaguely influences the final outcome.

Appropriately, perhaps, the man appointed to find a way out of the mess is Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council and a former Belgian prime minister. Expect some unexpected names. As Mr Van Rompuy himself has conceded, his own appointment in 2009 came as “a surprise” to all.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Who will run Europe?"

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