Ready or Not, Here Comes the Next Leader in Brussels

Feb. 27, 2014 5:31 p.m. ET
Usually, the biggest question ahead of any vote is who is going to win. But for this May’s European elections, there’s another issue: What are the parties and their candidates trying to win?
In the last European election in 2009, the answer to the second question was clear—parties wanted to gain seats in the European Parliament that would help them shape new laws.
This time around, the answer isn’t so obvious.
That’s because mainstream European parties, including the center-left Party of European Socialists and the center-right European People’s Party, or EPP, are for the first time appointing candidates to head their campaigns.
These so-called lead candidates aim to do more than bring out votes across the European Union’s 28 member states. They are seeking a personal prize: to become the president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm and the only institution with the right to initiate policies.
Until now, the commission president has been selected by the bloc’s prime ministers and presidents in closed-door meetings after parliamentary elections, with the parliament getting only a yes-or-no vote.
Giving voters more say on who gets the EU’s top job seems like a smart move at a time when the bloc is facing a legitimacy crisis after years of economic turmoil. Yet the way this new system is unrolling threatens to confuse voters.

Members of the European Parliament take part in a voting session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week. Reuters

“If you try to introduce an element of direct democracy into the system without doing it properly it will look like a stitch-up,” says Heather Grabbe, director of EU affairs at Open Society Foundations, a pro-democracy pressure group.
The biggest problem with modeling the selection of a new commission president after the way a prime minister is chosen in parliamentary democracies such as the U.K. or Germany is that this new process hasn’t been endorsed by EU leaders. Some, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, have openly questioned the link between lead candidates and the top commission job.
That matters because EU leaders still have to nominate the new commission president and send that person and other commissioners for approval to Parliament. While the legislature can block their appointments, there is no legal obligation for leaders to select a winning candidate.
The results of this indecision have been obvious as European parties select their candidates. No high-profile sitting politicians have been willing to give up their current posts for the insecurity of having to win an election and then risk seeing it ignored by EU leaders.
As a consequence, when Europe’s top Socialists travel to Rome this weekend to formally appoint their lead candidate, the only contender will be Martin Schulz, the little-known president of the European Parliament, who faces skepticism even among those in his own party in Germany, the Social Democrats.
At the EPP’s congress in Dublin next week, center-right delegates will choose between former Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis and Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of tiny Luxembourg.The EU’s current internal market commissioner, the Frenchman Michel Barnier, has yet to announce his candidacy despite saying he planned to run, and some officials in Brussels are speculating that he may stay out of the race altogether.
The small crop of contenders isn’t the only symptom of the uncertainty over the new system. The candidates themselves have been hazy on what position they’re actually running for.
“Currently we’re talking about president of the European Commission,” Mr. Dombrovskis said last week when asked whether he would be content with another top job at the commission.
Similarly, when Ms. Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, endorsed Mr. Juncker earlier this week, it made no mention of the commission.
Yet, despite the lukewarm response to the idea of an elected president, the process may already be too far along to stop. In Rome and Dublin, national party leaders will take the stage alongside their lead candidates—a photo opportunity that may be hard to erase when the election results come out on May 25.
“In my opinion, the train already left months ago,” says Kostas Sasmatzoglou, the EPP’s campaign manager.
Brian Synnott, his counterpart at the European Socialists, said, “This is really happening.”
They have already scheduled two debates between lead candidates that will be shown live on major national broadcasters and believe big channels in Germany and France may even want to stage their own debates.
“When the media starts writing about them, they suddenly have a back story,” Simon Hix, professor of European and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says of the candidates.
Whether coverage picks up beyond broadsheet newspapers and political television shows will mostly depend on whether national parties embrace their candidates in their own campaigns. The EPP has only about €1.6 million ($2.2 million) to promote its lead candidate, not enough to run TV spots or newspaper ads. The Socialists, says Mr. Synnott, have even less, although he has high hopes for the party’s grass-roots campaigners.
“As of right now, it’s really hard to predict,” says Mr. Hix. “A lot will depend on what happens in the next 10 weeks.”
Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at gabriele.steinhauser@wsj.com

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