Many, mostly Federalists, locked in a parallel universe which I call the Brussels bubble, keep bashing the intergovernmental approach taken at the last EU Summit in the selection of those presiding over the EU institutions. I know I might be on the minority side in this bubble but I’m sure I will be representing the silent majority when I say that I believe, on the contrary, that the inter-governmentalist approach taken by the heads of state is not only here to stay, but is the only system that can work and can save the EU project from breaking up.

With the nomination of the German Defence Minister Ursula Von Der Leyen who, at the time of writing still needs the European Parliament’s green light, the European Council respected the Treaties that say that member states are to nominate a candidate but, so in doing, must take account of the European election results. Indeed, the nominee hails from the political family that won the elections, the European People’s Party.

That is why one is right to question the future of the spitzenkandidaten system. I, for one, believe that it is dead for good and has to be revisited. Let us remember that the process, launched in 2014 on the initiative of the then PES nominee Martin Schulz, was agreed by the pan-political parties but not enshrined in the treaties nor endorsed by the heads of state.

I wonder why some are acting surprised or even insulted by the outcome. Months before the 25 May elections, the heads of state declared that the mechanism for selecting the next Commission president should not be automatic. In fact, 15 months before, Politico reported back then that “the Spitzenkandidat had already lost, sort of. On Friday, EU leaders rejected an automatic mechanism for selecting the next Commission president that they believe strips them of the power to pick Europe’s most senior official.” It was also reported that the leaders acknowledged that a lead candidate could well become the Commission president – but at their discretion and without any ‘automaticity’.

So while I must commend the approach taken by pan-European groups of parties running in the European Parliament to go through the selection of their nominee by organising some sort of primaries between the representatives of national political parties and having the nominee campaigning in many cities across Europe, one must also understand that such a system circumvents the ‘one country, one vote’ approach framed in the EU summits. The spitzenkandidaten process is a move towards a federal Europe that strips power from member states and hands it over to the political groups in the European Parliament.

Furthermore, I would definitely object to the statement some are making that the spitzenkandidaten process is more democratic. It is not. The treaty says that the President of the European Commission should be proposed by the democratically elected leaders of the member states. And that he or she should be elected by the democratically elected members of the European Parliament. This is the double democratic legitimacy of the Commission President. As EU Council President Tusk was reported saying, with the spitzenkandidaten process, we are cutting away one of the two sources of legitimacy, thus making it less democratic, not more.

The members of the European Parliament can shoot down the nomination of Ursula Von Der Leyen and they have every right to do so. But their judgement should not be based on revenging the approach taken by the Heads of States but on the merits and abilities – or lack of them – of the candidate. Some journalists are claiming that she is a disappointment for many as Germany’s defence Minister and has failed to deliver. Others point out that, under her command, the Defence Ministry in Germany is ridden with procurement and hiring scandals. What I know is that in one of the interviews she gave earlier this year, she said that Germany remains committed to defending the values of democracy, the rule of law and the rights and dignity of the individual.

Those defending the nominee argue that Christine Lagarde was found guilty of criminal negligence before being appointed to the IMF, and now heading for the ECB, while others remind us how Juncker approached the Luxleaks scandal. What we should avoid is a situation in which the nominee is tanked just because she was not a spitzenkandidat. The EU could be paralysed if the Parliament and Council end up in long-running opposition to each other.

 

Aaron Farrugia is Parliamentary Secretary for European Funds and Social Dialogue and a member of the Foreign and European Affairs Committee