Why are Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel clashing over who should be the next European Commission president?

Politics explained: France and Germany are at odds over the next leader of the bloc

With Jean-Claude Juncker’s term ending later in the year, and the EU elections out of the way, it’s time to choose the next president of the European Commission.

There are many different sub-plots and clashing interests that will have to be worked through before the final president emerges. But one of the most important is the rivalry between France and Germany.

How is the European Commission president chosen?

Under EU treaties, the 28 member states (which collectively make up the European Council) propose a candidate for president. They are supposed to take into account the results of the EU elections, though the treaties do not elaborate on what this means in practice.

To arrive at their candidate, member states vote with a “qualified majority” – that means 55 per cent of EU countries must vote in favour (16 out of 28) representing 65 per cent of the EU’s population. This is to stop tiny Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg from having the same power as larger states such as the UK, Germany and France.

Once the candidate is proposed by the council, the elected European parliament then has the option of confirming or rejecting them with a simple majority vote. If it rejects the candidate, the council has to find another candidate.

What’s all this about the spitzenkandidaten?

The spitzenkandidat, or “lead candidate” system, was used in 2014 to select the commission president. Each political group in the European parliament – the centre-left socialists, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the liberals, greens etc, propose a lead candidate. In theory, the candidate from the group that comes top becomes the president.

But this system isn’t written into the treaties, and has only been used once in 2014 – it’s not clear whether it will survive. Member states don’t like it because it takes power away from them and gives it to the parliament, and they’re under no legal obligation to follow it.

What does this have to do with France and Germany?

The winning spitzenkandidat was Manfred Weber, a German social conservative from Angela Merkel’s centre-right political alliance. Merkel said on Tuesday that she wants him to become commission president.

The problem is, a lot of other people – including Emmanuel Macron – don’t want him.

Why does Macron object to Manfred Weber?

This is a complicated question. Publicly, Macron has suggested that he has concerns about Manfred Weber’s suitability for the job: on Tuesday he suggested that other candidates had the “skills” to be president, notably omitting Weber.

Unlike most previous commission presidents, Weber has never held a national government position before – his most recent job was leading the centre-right EPP group in the European parliament, before being nominated as its candidate.

There’s also the question of national interest. Though neither leader would admit this publicly, the fact that Weber is German and from Merkel’s CDU/CSU party means he would inevitably be seen as close to the German government – which is always being accused of dominating the EU anyway.

Macron has ambitions to reform the EU, and while the German government pays lip service to reform in the name of cooperation, in practice it tends to drag its feet. Macron would much prefer to have his own person – or at least not Germany’s person – as president.

What does the European parliament think?

There are also differences of political tribe. Macron is aligned with the liberal Alde group in the European parliament, while Weber and Merkel are from the centre-right EPP. The EPP lost a lot of seats, while the liberals made quite substantial gains, so Alde feels it can assert itself.

Though the EPP is still the biggest group, it does not command a majority in the European parliament, and so relies on the support of other groups. The maths mean that the liberals are in a powerful position and could potentially block the wrong candidate, even if the EPP gains the support of the second largest group, the centre-left socialists.

While the European parliament’s leadership – which is also controlled by the EPP – put out a statement saying “the majority” of its political groups support keeping the spitzenkandidat system in place, one that didn’t support the move was the liberals – Macron’s group.

In the end, the position agreed by the parliament was that the commission president had to be someone “who made his/her programme and personality known prior to the elections, and engaged in a European-wide campaign”. This opens the door to a lot of other candidates who were not officially spitzenkandidaten.

What other candidates are in contention?

Apart from Weber, Macron mentioned Michel Barnier – the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, who happens to be French. Barnier is from the same centre-right group as Merkel and Weber, so his unique combination of nationality and political affiliation could be a compromise. Though he did not declare as a candidate, that hasn’t stopped him basically campaigning anyway during the lull in Brexit talks.

The other two candidates mentioned by Macron are Frans Timmermans, the centre-left Dutch politician who was the spitzenkandidat for the socialist group. Also in the frame is Margrethe Vestager, a Danish liberal who was not a spitzenkandidat but was put forward as a slate of personalities by Alde. More candidates could emerge if this isn’t resolved soon.

How’s this going to be resolved?

By negotiation and political horse-trading, the same way everything in Brussels is resolved. Leaders met for a summit on Tuesday evening and did not agree a huge amount, other than that the spitzenkandidat system would not automatically make someone president, but that someone being a spitzenkandidat was not a “disqualification” to becoming president (which nobody was arguing anyway).

They also agreed that all the top jobs in the EU should be balanced according to gender, geography, the size of countries and political affiliation. It’s probably going to be a difficult negotiation.