03 June 2024

CER's Kessler: Is the Spitzenkandidat process a waste of time?

The Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) process has not fulfilled its promise of engaging the average voter. Still, it has helped ‘europeanise’ the European Parliament elections and is worth persisting with.

Who should decide who becomes the President of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body? One option is the (democratically-elected) governments of the member-states. Another is the (democratically-elected) European Parliament. The Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) process is a compromise that was supposed to give both intergovernmentalists and federalists some of what they wanted. This insight explains both why it has not worked as intended so far, and also why the European Parliament nevertheless should double down on it for the 2029 elections.

 

The origins of the process
The Spitzenkandidat process does not appear in any treaty, though it reflects the evolving role of the European Parliament in the appointment of the European Commission, and the changing balance of power between national governments and MEPs. The Treaty of Rome gave the Assembly (the European Parliament’s predecessor) no role in appointing the Commission or its president: both were appointed by consensus of the Council. The Maastricht treaty of 1992 obliged the Council to consult the Parliament before nominating the Commission president; the Parliament then had to approve (or reject) the Commission as a whole. In the Amsterdam treaty of 1997, the Parliament for the first time gained the power to approve the Commission president separately from the rest of the Commission. 

 

It was the 2009 Lisbon Treaty that (implicitly) created the basis for the Spitzenkandidat process: Article 17 of the Treaty on European Union now states:  

 

“Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members.”

 

The phrase “taking into account the elections” was not intended to mean that the European Council should cede the right to choose the Commission president to the largest party group in the Parliament, but the Parliament saw an opening to tilt the balance of power in the EU in its favour, and to make the Commission president more dependent on the favour of MEPs than national leaders. MEPs wanted each European political party to nominate a (lead) candidate for Commission president before the elections. After the elections, the European Council was supposed to endorse the candidate from the party that won the most seats. The European Parliament would then approve the appointment. Proponents of the process argued that it would get rid of the opaque horse trading in the European Council that accompanied the selection of Commission presidents. By giving European voters the opportunity to directly influence the selection of the Commission president, supporters also argued that the process would increase the EU’s democratic legitimacy. Finally, many hoped that more personalised campaigns would increase voter turnout and citizen engagement.

 

Success in 2014, failure in 2019
Ahead of the 2014 elections, five European political parties nominated lead candidates. The lead candidates visited different EU member-states and took part in televised debates that were broadcast in several languages and by different media outlets. Proponents of the lead candidate process welcomed this as a step towards a truly European public sphere. As in previous elections, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) emerged with the most MEPs; its Spitzenkandidat was the former prime minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker. 

 

The European Council had been critical of the lead candidate process and viewed it as an attempt to subvert its power in selecting the Commission president. There was resistance from several members of the European Council to Juncker’s appointment, including from the UK under its then-prime minister David Cameron. But there was remarkable cohesion within the European Parliament in support of Juncker, which came as somewhat of a surprise to the European Council, and he was eventually approved by both the European Council and the Parliament as Commission president.....

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