Largest EU Party May Yield on Commission Job, Rutte Says

(Bloomberg) --

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he’s had indications from the European Union’s center-right bloc that it may be prepared to end a deadlock over the leadership of the next EU Commission as chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier emerged as an unsteady front-runner.

Even as the frenzied horsetrading over the post continued, Rutte, who belongs to a rival liberal group, said officials from the European People’s Party have privately signaled they may be ready to consider an alternative to their candidate Manfred Weber.

“I’m getting a lot of indications, but I should keep them to myself because most of them are given in confidence,” Rutte said in an interview with Bloomberg Television at a Group of 20 summit in Osaka. “So far the official position of the EPP is that they’re hanging on to Weber’s candidacy.”

With much of the haggling taking place behind closed doors and key EU leaders at the G-20, speculation went into overdrive two days before they are to meet again in Brussels to decide over the bloc’s top jobs. La Stampa newspaper reported that Italy may consider European Central Bank President Mario Draghi for the job. Two officials who requested not to be named discussing a confidential issue subsequently denied such intentions.

Barnier, a Frenchman who ruffled feathers in his own EPP with a thinly-disguised campaign rivaling Weber’s official bid, has emerged as a compromise candidate to lead the commission, the EU’s executive arm, according to several officials familiar with the discussion. The EPP, a center-right group aligned with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has insisted on its claim to the commission as the party that won the most votes in last month’s European election.

But the EPP’s Weber has been met with fierce opposition, spearheaded by France’s Emmanuel Macron. That’s prompted many in Brussels to look at Barnier as a compromise candidate, according to officials.

World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva and Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, both allied to Merkel’s political family, are also in the frame, officials said, although both would also encounter opposition.

--With assistance from John Follain.

To contact the reporters on this story: Yvonne Man in Osaka at yman9@bloomberg.net;Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt

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