Germany Takes a Top EU Job But Cracks Exposed in Merkel's Armor
In the end, Angela Merkel landed on her feet.
(Bloomberg) -- In the end, Angela Merkel landed on her feet.
After three days of brutal horsetrading and weeks of consultations, a German, Ursula von der Leyen, stands to lead the European Union for the first time in more than half a century. France’s Emmanuel Macron shares the spoils, with Christine Lagarde named to lead the European Central Bank. Together, the two women form a symbol of change as the union came under pressure to seek renewal.
But the blunt show of EU power politics involved in distributing the bloc’s top jobs, also laid bare the cracks in Merkel’s once unassailable power as Europe’s preeminent leader.
At a key moment, she appeared to have misread the resistance in her own center-right political family to a compromise deal that would have installed a socialist as president of the European Commission. When the appointment finally pivoted to her own party ally and defense minister, Von der Leyen, Merkel was forced to abstain from the vote -- lacking the support from her Social Democratic coalition partner at home.
Osaka Deal
Von der Leyen’s nomination must now be approved by a European Parliament bristling against the sort of back-door wheeling and dealing that created it.
Previously the German leader had bought into an accord hashed out at the G-20 in Osaka that envisioned the socialist Frans Timmermans at the helm of the commission, since he was an endorsed lead candidate from one of the parliamentary factions.
But things didn’t go as planned. Merkel arrived at the summit on Sunday to find the “Osaka deal” assailed by Italy, eastern European governments and, to her dismay, leaders in her own European People’s Party who weren’t properly briefed. The EPP won the European election in May, they said, and should lay claim to the Commission.
“As things are shaping up, this won’t be a very simple negotiation, to put it mildly,” Merkel told reporters on her way into the summit.
Twenty hours later, after a sleepless night of trying to get the socialist Dutchman through, EU leaders had nothing to show for their efforts and the summit adjourned until Tuesday. A fuming Macron pilloried European leaders for driving the nomination process aground.
“Our credibility is deeply stained by these endless meetings that lead to nothing,” he said in the afternoon of Monday on his way out.
The next day, the mood shifted rapidly when a new plan that a French official attributed to Paris was put on the table: ditch the European Parliament’s lead candidates -- dubbed “Spitzenkandidaten” -- and give the EPP its due in the form Merkel’s own Christian Democratic Union ally Von der Leyen. The unexpected turn unlocked the byzantine process, at least among the leaders.
Macron’s Triumph
For his part, Macron appears to have scored a more unalloyed victory. He managed to get a French woman installed at the ECB, a French-speaking Liberal ally at the European Council and saw off some of the more extreme positions of some eastern European governments.
On Sunday night, he rejected the suggestion of some leaders to reconvene a couple weeks later. At that time he’d already secured Lagarde for the ECB and didn’t want it to slip out of his hands, according to an EU official privy to the negotiations.
An increasingly boxed-in Merkel had suggested Lithuania’s outgoing President Dalia Grybauskaite as commission president but it was Macron who came up with the idea of a German to help Merkel sell the package at home.
But there were plenty of other Germans who were going to be unhappy with the decision. Not least her initial candidate for the job: Manfred Weber. According to one account, at one point Merkel was overheard asking Macron to please tell the EPP she had done her best to fight for Weber because they didn’t believe she did.
In fact, Merkel was at pains to tell reporters that the seemingly elegant solution was not her own -- and that she had come to Brussels committed to the Spitzenkandidat principle that EU parliamentarians laud as a more democratic process. She attributed the trust within the council for her defense minister to other leaders.
“I certainly heard a lot of support across parties today, even though as I said, I pushed for a different result for the entire day yesterday,” Merkel said.
Fine Line
Whether or not a German as commission president fell into Merkel’s lap, Merkel will need to walk a fine line in Berlin, where her Social Democratic coalition partner will take a dim view of the von der Leyen nomination. Martin Schulz, the former SPD leader whom Merkel defeated in the 2017 election, mocked van der Leyen’s nomination, saying she was the worst minister in Merkel’s cabinet.
When the Council’s nomination package came to a vote more than 48 hours after leaders arrived in Brussels on June 30, Merkel’s hands were tied, without the immediate support from the SPD at home.
“The Social Democrats were not able to decide today on whether to agree to this, so I had to abstain,” she said. “That’s the regular rule.”
The result may emerge as a Pyrrhic victory for the chancellor. Merkel, who has said she won’t run again when her term ends in 2021 at the latest, was as much on the receiving end of political forces churning in Brussels than the master tactician she has been in the past.
--With assistance from Milda Seputyte, Gregory Viscusi, Nikos Chrysoloras, Jasmina Kuzmanovic and Jan Bratanic.
To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Brussels at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net;Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt
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