Brussels, 26/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - The negotiations to appoint the future President of the European Commission, a post to which Jean-Claude Juncker, candidate of the EPP, which was victorious on paper on Sunday night, his Socialist counterpart Martin Schulz and even the Belgian Liberal outsider, Guy Verhofstadt, have laid claim, got down to brass tacks on Monday 26 May as the projections started take shape (see our special edition). In the early afternoon, the European People's Party had 213 seats in hand, ahead of the Socialists and Democrats (190 seats) and the ALDE (64 seats). According to estimates which are still provisional, they were trailed by the Greens/EFA Group with 53 seats, the ECR Group (46 seats), the GUE/NGL Group (42 seats), the “independent MEPs” (41 seats), and then the EFD with 38 seats and the “others” group, which gained 64 seats.
However, on Sunday evening, the EPP began to claim victory and the right to start talks as a priority, as the three main parties pledged to do in a joint agreement in March. Once the first results were in, Juncker and Schulz were in touch with one other for bilateral discussions which continued into Monday and in which Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, was also to be involved, a source said on Monday. At this point, the idea is to agree on a grand EPP/S&D coalition. With 403 seats, this coalition would be enough to push either candidate through, but the German Socialist Martin Schulz, whose party, SPD, made a good showing in Germany behind Angela Merkel's CDU, has no intention of “selling himself off cheaply”, the same source continued. The post of high representative of the EU for Germany or a weighty Commissioner's portfolio combining digital and economy was one of the elements in the balance, the source added. On Monday evening, a meeting is to be held in Berlin between SPD boss Sigmar Gabriel and representatives of the CDU/CSU to establish these negotiation elements and clarify Berlin's position as to the candidate it will support to take the helm of the Commission.
The victory of the Democratic Party in Italy was not enough to allow the S&D to narrow the gap. The Democratic Party (Centre-Left) of the head of the Italian government, Matteo Renzi, won the European elections in Italy with 40.8% of votes cast, some 20 points ahead of the Eurosceptics of the Five-Star Movement (M5S) of Beppe Grillo, according to the final results published on Monday. M5S secured 21.2%, an extremely disappointing result for this recently formed anti-party movement which turned the Italian political landscape on its head in the general elections of 2013, when it took a quarter of the votes in each of the chambers (25.5% in the Chamber of Deputies). The party Forza Italia (Centre-Right) of the former president of the Italian Council, Silvio Berlusconi, won 18.6%, which is very much down on his usual results and below the symbolic bar of 20%, according to the figures of the home affairs ministry. The Lega Nord, an anti-immigration and anti-euro party, did better than expected with 6.2%, but still some way short of its personal best of nearly 10%.
Merkel supports Juncker
On Monday morning, the German chancellor gave her support to Jean-Claude Juncker and welcomed a “good campaign”, thereby validating the application of the former Eurogroup chief, according to reports in the German media. However, the chancellor has not officially stated whether she feels that Juncker should automatically become the next head of the European Commission. “There have to be discussions” on this Commission president, she said. This will, moreover, be the job of the informal dinner of EU leaders to be held in Brussels this 27 May, which will follow a conference of the presidents of the EP groups and mini-summits of the European political parties. And David Cameron, the British prime minister, has already said that he wants neither Juncker nor Schulz.
In the meantime, the Liberals stated on Monday that they retained their role as “kingmakers”, or as an alternative to Juncker and Schulz, should they fail to agree. “ALDE member parties emerged on top of the polls in six member states and remains the third political force in the EU Assembly”, Guy Verhofstadt stated. And “given the narrower gap between the Christian Democrats and Socialists, ALDE's continued role as kingmaker is confirmed. We will seek to consolidate this position in the coming days and ensure that the future Parliament does not become a Trojan horse for euroscepticism”, the Belgian politician added.
The Eurosceptics, who received a boost in certain countries, most notably France, where Marine Le Pen's extreme right-wing party bagged an historic result, were on Monday still engaged in a hard battle to attract the number of MEPs and nationalities they need to form a group. Nigel Farage's UKIP, which won the elections in the United Kingdom ahead of David Cameron's Conservatives with 27.5% of the votes, is effectively competing against Marine Le Pen who, like Farage, needs to put together a group at the EP with 25 MEPs from at least seven member states. (SP)