French President Emmanuel Macron, who joined with the Liberals to form a new centrist force that won 109 seats according to initial results, had dinner in Paris on Monday with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the EU’s most prominent Socialist leader, clearly with an eye toward forming a progressive alliance that could stop the EPP’s lead candidate, German MEP Manfred Weber.
The contest for the Commission presidency is quickly shaping up as a two-front battle.
First, there is the fight among the EU's major political families — the conservatives, who insisted on Monday that by finishing first with 180 seats they have rights to the Commission presidency, and the center-left Socialists, the Liberals and the Greens, who declared that their combined tally of 324 votes has delivered a clear mandate to break the EPP’s monopoly control of EU institutions.
Then, there is a tug of war between the European Parliament, which has demanded that EU leaders respect the Spitzenkandidat or "lead candidate" system, and the leaders of the European Council, who have said that they cannot — and will not — be bound to follow it. That system envisions the Council choosing as Commission president one of the "lead candidates" from the election who can win a majority in Parliament.
"We got the largest mandate in the election," Dara Murphy, the EPP's campaign coordinator said at a post-election event organized by POLITICO, dismissing an assertion that the conservatives are now a minority within the pro-EU majority. Murphy citied "a significant gap" between the EPP and the parties that finished in second, third and fourth place.
But he also issued a fierce defense of the lead candidate system, saying that a robust increase in voter turnout means leaders have an even stronger obligation to follow the process. "I think people saw these European elections as being far more important to them on key significant issues," Murphy said, adding, "That, I think, really means that on this occasion we have to the greatest possible extent to respect what the people of Europe have said. They engaged in the elections more than they did previously, and I think they made a choice."
Murphy insisted that the lead candidate process "gives a strong legitimacy to the next president of the Commission to act, because he can say he has received a mandate. " He added, "We want Manfred Weber to be president of the Commission, it's the only position we're interested in."
Given the support in Parliament for the Spitzenkandidat system, Macron's best chance of ending Weber's bid seems to be in the European Council, where liberals and socialists together currently hold 15 of the 28 seats.
And Macron's intention to build an anti-Weber coalition seemed to be confirmed by news that he and Sánchez would meet again Tuesday for lunch with an expanded group: liberal Prime Ministers Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and Charles Michel of Belgium, as well as Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, who is a Socialist. [...]
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Related article on POLITICO: ALDE 2.0 deals blow to Weber’s Commission dream
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