Brussels, 29/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 28 October, Alain Lamassoure MEP (EPP, France) responded to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's proposal at the European Council on Friday that the candidate coming top in the European elections would not automatically be appointed president of the European Commission.
For the first time in May, the European Parliament will inaugurate an institutional innovation set out in the Lisbon Treaty, which stipulates that the future president of the Commission will no longer be nominated as a high level international official through the secret agreement of political leaders, Lamassoure notes. Instead, the Commission president will “come from a parliamentary election won by his political party at the level of Europe, and the president will therefore benefit from the legitimacy given by the vote of 500 million European citizens”. In order to personalise this vote a little more, the political parties have also decided to select a head of list for themselves, and the selection procedures are already open in several groups.
Merkel, whose reluctance about this procedure is nothing new, drove the message home a little further on Friday by stating that the European Council would certainly nominate a candidate who will indeed have to have the support of the European Parliament, but without being automatically linked to the result of the vote. “I see nothing of an automatic nature”, Merkel said.
In Lamassoure's opinion, this is an error and “Angela Merkel is making a mistake”. “The European Council will find itself in the situation of a collective head of state, ratifying the democratic vote. By contrast, it remains in control of choosing the holders of the important functions created by the treaty”, he said. He believes this innovation is “necessary to finish making the European Union a real democratic power”. Lamassoure recalls that this arrangement was “proposed to the European Convention ten years ago by both the French and German governments” and it “has featured since in the electoral charter of the EPP”. This innovation is all the more urgent “as resentment against Europe in general is on the rise everywhere, and [resentment] against the country which is currently dominant [is on the rise] in particular. The time has come for Europe to have an elected leader, a face, a real head of the Commission who has his own legitimacy”, Lamassoure stated. (SP/transl.fl)