Brussels, 04/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Greens/EFA Group at the European Parliament reacted on Friday 4 April to the announcement on 3 April by the EPP, S&D and ALDE that they would unite on the day after the European elections to field a common candidate to become the new president of the European Commission in opposition to the Council of Ministers' candidate (see EUROPE 11053).
In a joint statement, the heads of the three biggest groups at the EP said that they would launch inter-institutional talks as soon as the European election results are known and that the future president of the Commission must be selected from one of the candidates designated during the primaries.
The Greens say the statement by the three groups that they will unite behind one of the three candidates in the primaries (Martin Schulz, Jean-Claude Juncker and Guy Verhofstadt) to have the necessary majority is “anti-democratic”. Rebecca Harms of Germany and Monica Frassoni of Italy said the deal “confirms what was widely expected: in spite of all the promises that these elections would fundamentally change the way the European Commission president is chosen, they want to defend as much as possible their tradition of striking deals among themselves. They want to make sure that the status quo prevails, dividing up the spoils between themselves ahead of the elections. The Greens are campaigning for real change in the context of the forthcoming elections. We believe the European elections should be the democratic foundation for the coming legislative term and are strongly opposed to political deals being concluded before European voters have had their say. We refuse to continue with business as usual”. (SP)