Row over Juncker nomination deepens
In the aftermath of last week’s EU summit, Europe’s political forces are preparing themselves for weeks of wrangling over EU appointments.
The row over who should become the next president of the European Commission is escalating as Europe’s governments and parties seek to influence the appointment process.
In Germany, the Social Democrats are stepping up the pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to ensure that Jean-Claude Juncker is appointed president of the Commission.
“It is absurd that we’ve been seriously debating for a week whether the winner of an election should be allowed to take up the office he sought,” said Thomas Oppermann, the leader of the SPD in the German parliament. “There is no reason why Jean-Claude Juncker should not become president of the Commission.”
The SPD is the junior partner in the governing ‘grand coalition’ led by Merkel’s centre-right CDU.
Oppermann made his comments amid confusing leaks and counter-leaks this weekend, most of them originating from German sources.
On Friday, Merkel had dropped her previous reticence and voiced support not only for Juncker’s candidacy for Commission president (something she had supported before) but for his actual appointment, which requires the backing of a weighted majority of member states’ governments and an absolute majority in the European Parliament.
But today’s edition of newsweekly Der Spiegel (2 June) reports that Merkel’s reticence had to do with an implicit threat from David Cameron, the UK’s prime minister, that his country might leave if the federalist Juncker is appointed, and that Merkel, at last week’s EU summit in Brussels, threatened to join Juncker’s opponents.
Four centre-right prime ministers – Cameron, Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden and Viktor Orbán of Hungary – spoke out against Juncker at the summit, but it was clear that even if joined by several other member states they would fall short of a blocking minority.
Aides to Cameron disputed Der Spiegel‘s account and said Cameron thought Juncker was the wrong person for the job.
Juncker told the tabloid Bild am Sonntag that “Europe must not be blackmailed” and that he was “optimistic” that he would be elected Commission president next month. He said he enjoyed the support of a “broad majority” of government leaders and that he was working toward “getting the others on board as well”.
The argument is not simply about Juncker but about the Spitzenkandidaten system. The centre-left generally supports the system while on the centre-right there is a split between prime ministers, who are less enthusiastic, and MEPs, who see the system of lead candidates as a way to increase their power over the appointment process.
The main groups in the European Parliament had endorsed Juncker’s appointment on the morning of last week’s EU summit. Merkel described their move as “a declaration of war”, according to Der Spiegel.
But even in the centre-left, where support for the Spitzenkandidaten system had been quite strong, rifts might be opening up.
Bild am Sonntag also reported that François Hollande, France’s embattled Socialist president, was seeking to block Juncker and install a Frenchman, Pierre Moscovici, minister of finance and economy in the previous Socialist government, as Commission president instead. The newspaper gave no sources for its report.
Matteo Renzi, Italy’s centre-left prime minister, stressed in comments to an economic conference at the weekend that Juncker was “a” rather than “the” candidate for Commission president.
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