Will it be business as usual or a summer of stalemate? Ursula von der Leyen learns on Tuesday whether the European Parliament is ready to approve her bid to become the first female president of the European Commission.
Eurosceptics often deride the Strasbourg assembly as a rubber stamp body, but this week there is genuine suspense over the 60-year-old German defence minister’s fate.
If she is to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels’ top job, she will need an absolute majority of 374 lawmakers voting by secret ballot.
She, of course, has the backing of most of the national leaders who agreed to nominate her at a three-day emergency summit at the start of July. But she has struggled to win over the parliament’s political clans and will be weakened from the outset if she has to rely on eurosceptic support. The new head of the European Commission is due to take power on November 1, immediately after the latest deadline for Britain’s departure from the bloc. He or she will have to manage the Brexit aftermath, Italy shirking its debt targets and efforts by Poland and Hungary to flout the EU mandated rules of liberal democracy.
For that, the commission president will need a reliable majority in Strasbourg, but May’s European election threw up a more fragmented EU parliament than ever. At the same time, the pan-European political groups that came together after the vote are frustrated by the way von der Leyen’s candidacy was foisted on them.
Under the EU Treaty, the head of the commission is nominated by member state leaders, if necessary by a qualified majority vote.
But many in parliament and in the Brussels EU institutions wanted the 28 heads of government to choose one of the parliamentary groups’ lead candidates. Instead, they cast aside those names and — after intense closed-door negotiations — chose to poach Germany’s defence minister for the role.
Von der Leyen might scrape in but, as Maurice says, “less than 400 votes would be very weak” — and a defeat for efforts to build a pro-Europe coalition.
If the German candidate is facing defeat the vote might yet be postponed, but if she is defeated Europe will need to nominate a new champion.
And that could only come after a summer of bitter Brussels infighting. — AFP
Céline LE PRIOUX
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