(Bloomberg Opinion) -- If she’s confirmed as the new president of the European Commission this week, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen will have no shortage of pressing tasks on her agenda. Among the most urgent should be reforming the dysfunctional process that got her there.
As the head of the European Union’s executive branch, the commission presidency is a powerful office. Its occupant sets the EU’s policy agenda, allocates key portfolios, and directs a civil service of more than 30,000. The next president will face challenges including a looming Brexit deadline, slowing EU economic growth, a trade dispute with the U.S., and widening disagreements about further integration — not to mention the possibility of another euro crisis.
Deciding who fills this essential role, however, is a maddening game of thrones.
To become the nominee, a candidate must win over a qualified majority of the national leaders who comprise the European Council. They, in turn, are supposed to “take account” of the most recent parliamentary elections in making their choice. Once nominated, the candidate must then win an absolute majority in the European Parliament to be confirmed.
That’s convoluted enough. But the process has also tended to get mixed up in continent-wide horse trading over the EU’s other top jobs. National leaders wrangled behind closed doors over the right mix of geographic diversity, party representation, policy preferences, demographic attributes, and so on. It was not exactly a model of transparency.
In 2014, the European Parliament sought to take this process out of the smoke-filled room and give voters a greater say. Under the so-called spitzenkandidat system, the main party groups are supposed to nominate candidates, who are then expected to publicly campaign for the job.
This time, though, both major party groupings failed to get their candidates through, thanks to a more fragmented parliament. Thus it was back to the backroom: Weeks of haggling led to a surprise deal in which von der Leyen got the top commission job, Christine Lagarde of France was nominated to head the European Central Bank, and Charles Michel of Belgium was tipped as president of the European Council.
All three picks were defensible. And the secretive process may have appealed to several member states. But it left the parliament weakened and was hardly open or democratic. Voters could be forgiven for wondering what just happened.
Von der Leyen shouldn’t shy from trying to bring this process into the light. Ditching the parliament-led system entirely would be a mistake; having candidates who articulate a vision and can be held accountable is preferable to having one parachuted in after an all-night summit. But truly engaging the electorate requires something more. Despite the recent campaigns, voters had little idea who the candidates were; just over a quarter of Germans knew that their own Manfred Weber was the choice of the largest parliamentary grouping, the European People’s Party.
The key is to strengthen the ties between national parties and the larger political families that sit in the European Parliament. The current system essentially amounts to 28 national elections, with candidates drawn from local parties who are then expected to represent EU citizens. Adding transnational party lists could make EU lawmakers accountable to a broader electorate and help ensure campaigns aren’t simply used as domestic protest votes.
Similarly, giving national parliaments a more substantive stake in EU policymaking — beyond their current consultative role — might also improve engagement and provide valuable feedback for EU legislators. That, in turn, could help ensure that the momentum of the last parliamentary elections — in which turnout reached nearly 51%, reversing recent declines — could be translated into broader support for the EU project.
Such reforms would help make Europe’s institutions less distant and bewildering to the voters they’re meant to serve. If von der Leyen pushes them, she’ll have proved an inspired choice despite the unseemly process that got her there.
Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.
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