(Bloomberg) -- The European Parliament chose an Italian Socialist as its president for the next 2 1/2 years, putting in place one of the pieces in the top-jobs package approved by Europe’s national leaders.
The election of David Sassoli to head the 28-nation parliament signals it is also likely to endorse the candidacy of Germany’s Christian Democratic Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen to lead the European Commission, as both nominations were part of the same deal made by government chiefs on Tuesday.
The choice of Sassoli a day later in Strasbourg, France, thwarts a move by some Socialist members of the European Union assembly to torpedo von der Leyen’s nomination for the EU’s executive arm. They said the bloc’s national leaders should have proposed Frans Timmermans, a Dutch Socialist, for the top commission post.
“Europe needs to be stronger,” Sassoli, a 63-year-old former journalist and decade-long veteran of the EU Parliament, told the assembly on Wednesday. “We need to remain united in our diversity.”
EU government heads ended three days of deliberations on Tuesday in Brussels by tapping von der Leyen to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as commission president. It is the first time a woman would hold the bloc’s most powerful political post.
Von der Leyen will have to win the backing of a majority of the 751-seat EU Parliament when it votes on her nomination during the week of July 15. With 151 seats, the Socialist faction could in theory engineer a rejection of von der Leyen if they manage to persuade enough other groups to oppose her. But in practice they will have dissenters in their own ranks who support the overall EU jobs package.
In a package meant to balance party, national and geographic interests, the leaders on Tuesday also appointed a Spanish Socialist to be EU foreign-policy chief, a Belgian Liberal to chair their summits and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde of France to be European Central Bank president.
A separate, informal, part of the deal allocated the presidency of the EU Parliament to a Socialist for the first half of the assembly’s new five-year term. Sassoli succeeds Christian Democrat compatriot Antonio Tajani.
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