‘EU 6’ to meet Friday to discuss Commission president choice

More than a week after the European Parliament election, the search for a European Commission president remains wide open with no clear front-runner — and a new approach to negotiations within the European Council is injecting yet another element of uncertainty.

As part of that new process, six EU leaders charged by their political party families with leading the search for a new Commission president will meet in Brussels on Friday evening to discuss candidates over dinner, several Council and EU officials told POLITICO.

At an informal European Council last week, leaders from the EU's three main political families — the European People's Party, the Party of European Socialists and the liberal ALDE — designated six "coordinators" to direct the discussions on filling the Commission presidency and nearly all of the EU's top jobs.

It is a complex undertaking that requires trying to address multiple imperatives, including taking account of the Parliament election results, as well as obligations to seek geographic and demographic balance, and to improve gender parity.

As coordinators, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovič and Latvia's Krišjānis Kariņš are representing the conservative EPP; Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel are representing the Liberals; and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Portugal's António Costa are representing the Social Democrats.

In 2014, the conservatives and Social Democrats won enough seats in the European Parliament to make the decision about top jobs largely a discussion between them, the EU's two largest political families, and there was essentially an agreement in place between Jean-Claude Juncker and his Socialist challenger, then Parliament President Martin Schulz, over the grand coalition they would form after the election.

But this year's more complicated election results mean that a broader coalition will be needed to form a majority among the pro-EU political families, and the Liberals and Socialists are insisting on breaking the monopoly that the EPP currently holds on the three top jobs: the presidencies of the Commission, Council and Parliament.

The new system of coordinators adds another layer to the already complex set of consultations set to begin between Council President Donald Tusk and party group leaders in the Parliament. The Council, voting by a qualified majority, must nominate a candidate for Commission president, but that candidate must then be confirmed by a majority in Parliament — meaning at least 376 of 751 votes.

"It's kind of a new invention," a senior EU official said of the new coordinators. "I don't think that we are convinced that it will be sufficient."

To some degree, the appointment of the six coordinators could weaken the role of the political group leaders; two of them — the conservatives' Manfred Weber and the Liberals' Guy Verhofstadt — are candidates for top jobs.

At the same time, the informal discussions among the coordinators are not necessarily where the ultimate decisions will be made and Tusk, as Council president, cannot rely on the coordinators to speak for all 28 heads of state and government. To start, the two most powerful EU leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, are not participating in those discussions.

There are also leaders of large EU countries, whose populations give them heavy weight in qualified majority voting, but who are not part of the three main families. These include U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, or her replacement, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

As a result, Tusk will need to continue his own intensive consultations with EU leaders, not knowing the extent to which the coordinators speak for others. "It's not something that at this stage he can trust 100 percent," the senior EU official said, adding, "It's not because Tusk is against it in any way."

The full Council is due to have its next formal discussion on the leadership posts at a regular summit in Brussels later this month.

The Parliament election results were inconclusive, leaving a diminished EPP as the biggest group but controlling a far slimmer plurality, and making the conservatives a minority within the expected, larger pro-EU coalition that also includes the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens, which is expected to lean center-left. As a result, officials are bracing for a potentially gridlocked process in which it will be difficult to settle on a nominee for the Commission presidency.

One possible path forward could involve leaders of the European Council moving more aggressively to fill other top jobs over which they have more control, namely the presidencies of the Council itself and the European Central Bank. Such a move would initially circumvent what could end up being divisive and protracted negotiations with the Parliament over the next Commission president. At the same time, whatever selections are made by the Council will have the effect of narrowing the choices for the Commission presidency given the requirements to achieve balance among the parties.

Friday's informal dinner, at least, will begin to push the entire process forward. Discussions, which normally take place in Parliament, have been stalled this time, partly because of initial disagreement among the parties over who would take the lead in coordinating the talks.