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EU Ditches Early Favorites as Race for Top Jobs Thrown Wide Open

EU leaders cast aside the formal candidates who’ve dominated the race to head the next EU Commission and will start again.

EU Ditches Early Favorites as Race for Top Jobs Thrown Wide Open
Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, gestures while speaking at the Federation of German Industries conference in Berlin, Germany. (Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- European Union leaders cast aside the formal candidates who’ve dominated the race to head the next EU Commission and will start again from scratch less than two weeks before a self-imposed deadline.

As summit talks in Brussels wrapped up in the early hours of Friday, leaders concluded that none of the three front-runners would be able to win approval from the European Parliament, officials said. They scheduled another meeting for June 30 in an attempt to find a solution.

Gridlock over the commission, which proposes rules and supervises the EU’s vast single market, leaves investors in the dark over a series of critical posts including the next president of the European Central Bank. It also means that efforts to tie the selection of a commission president to the result of the EU election are set to be pushed aside in favor of more traditional Brussels backroom dealing.

"At the moment all options are open," Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel told reporters on Friday. "It’s not a eurovision contest. We are going to see how we can make a package. I can’t tell you who will do what."

EU Ditches Early Favorites as Race for Top Jobs Thrown Wide Open

The negotiations foundered over German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insistence on her center-right candidate, Manfred Weber, despite strong opposition from other parties and several EU leaders. While Merkel’s alliance will be the biggest group in the next parliament, the fragmentation of the assembly means that it would need backing from at least two more parties to confirm Weber’s appointment.

Ultimately, all three of the formal candidates proposed by the parties -- Weber, liberal Margrethe Vestager and social democrat Frans Timmermans -- were effectively vetoed.

"The process was blocked because political families considered that the initial agreements gave them certain entitlements," French President Emmanuel Macron said after the meeting. "Those commitments are lifted tonight and that allows the process to be restarted.”

The Full Package

Leaders have signaled they want to settle on a name before the European Parliament returns from election recess on July 2 because their room for maneuver will be restricted if the assembly elects its own president before they reach a decision. The head of the parliament, like the commission chief and the ECB presidency, are part of a bundle of jobs that need to strike a balance between different parties and different groups of countries within the bloc.

EU Ditches Early Favorites as Race for Top Jobs Thrown Wide Open

The clash is reminiscent of a struggle in 2004 when two official contenders for the top commission job -- Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt and the U.K.’s Chris Patten -- canceled each other out. That opened the way for Portugal’s little known prime minister at the time, Jose Barroso.

Fifteen years later, leaders are searching for another possible compromise from the Christian-Democratic camp. Among the names are Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who happens to be a former EU lawmaker, and Bulgarian World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva, who used to be European budget commissioner.

History Lessons

Precedent suggests that Plenkovic may be more likely -- it’s 25 years since the council of leaders picked a commission president from outside their group.

Any nomination for the commission is subject to approval by the parliament and a broad alliance between mainstream parties is needed to approve any appointment.

At stake is whether the next central bank chief will continue Mario Draghi’s legacy of protecting the euro and its accommodative monetary policy. The role of the commission is also key, as the bloc’s executive arm is responsible for trade and antitrust policy at a time when Donald Trump is threatening the EU with punitive tariffs and European companies are seeking mega mergers that will help them to compete with Chinese behemoths.

“It’s quicker to elect a pope, very often, than it is to fill these particular positions,” Irish Premier Leo Varadkar said.

--With assistance from Ben Sills, Zoe Schneeweiss, Richard Bravo, Viktoria Dendrinou, Milda Seputyte, Jan Bratanic, Lyubov Pronina, Alexander Weber, Ewa Krukowska, Marine Strauss, Stephanie Bodoni, William Horobin, Patrick Donahue and John Follain.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net;Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net;Nikos Chrysoloras in Brussels at nchrysoloras@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Zoe Schneeweiss

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.