Strasbourg, 15/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - A defender of the Community method whilst respecting the member states and the idea of nations, demanding when it comes to budgetary rigour yet opposed to excessive austerity, a proponent of eventually opening up to all of the EU's neighbours whilst putting any enlargement on hold for the next five years… It was this multifaceted Jean-Claude Juncker, wishing to take on board the interests of his political allies, who succeeded in winning a sizeable majority for his candidacy for the presidency of the European Commission, in the morning of Tuesday 15 July.
The former prime minister of Luxembourg and Eurogroup boss gathered a majority of 422 votes in favour, against 250 and 47 abstentions, out of a total of 729 voters. In order to be elected teh new president of the Commission, Juncker needed just 376 votes and sources close to him stated on Tuesday morning that he only expected “at least 400”, declining to be drawn on a higher score. As well as the votes of his group, the Luxembourger appears ultimately to have secured all of the votes of Guy Verhofstadt's ALDE Group, as the six Spanish MEPs who had earlier threatened to vote against Juncker finally got answers to their questions, a group source stated shortly after the vote.
Juncker won votes among the Greens as well, but in smaller proportions, with just 22 MEPs supporting him, according to the provisional counts. As for the Socialists and Democrats, the main allies of the EPP candidate, “the number of MEPs who did not vote for Juncker was very low”, Gianni Pittella, of the S&D Group, said after the vote, but did not go into the exact proportions. On Tuesday morning, the French Socialists had planned to abstain, whilst the Spanish Socialists intended to vote against him. In total, the Luxembourger must have dropped between 50 and 60 S&D votes in the ballot. The Conservatives of the ECR had already officially announced that they would not be voting for him, as had the GUE/NGL. However, both of these parties said on Tuesday that they were open to working with him and to revising their opinions of him at a later date on the basis of his actions, once at the helm of the Commission.
In spite of everything, victory seems to have been relatively comfortable for the Luxembourger, who did not necessarily expect this result and who said that he was also very happy not to have had any votes from extreme right-wing MEPs or “any of those who embody the rejection of Europe”, as he told a press conference. By way of comparison, José Manuel Barroso secured 382 votes in 2009 from a chamber of 736 MEPs. However, Juncker had no wish to get into such comparisons, going no further than to say that he had always supported the achievements of his Portuguese colleague and of the outgoing Commission.
Because now, another game is starting for him: on Wednesday, he will be in Brussels, where he will meet the mwember states to discuss who will be the future high representative. Juncker will also have work to do on putting together his College of Commissioners, a job which could be concluded by the end of this month. “We will discuss the portfolios in early August”, he told his German counterpart, the European Parliament president, Martin Schulz, whom he intends to make his “principal interlocutor”. On Wednesday evening, Juncker will arrive at the dinner of heads of state with one concern on his mind: putting an end to a “desperate situation” in terms of parity, although he is well aware that the member states will not agree to put forward a list of candidates to him, including women. Nor, however, does this “need” for women mean that Juncker will necessarily support the candidacy of Italy's Federica Mogherini to take over from Catherine Ashton. On this point, the Luxembourger preferred to reserve his comments for the heads of state and government.
Commitments to reassure, whilst keeping hold of his independence
In any case, Juncker had more concerns over his selection by the EP than he did over his nomination by the European Council on 27 June, over which he had “no doubts”, he said. It was in order to lift his concerns that he spent all morning reassuring the MEPs about his programme, even putting a few announcements their way. For instance, he promised to set in place an investment programme by February 2015, to mobilise nearly €330 billion over the next three years for public and private investments, between structural funds and instruments of the European Investment Bank.
On the management of the eurozone and the sovereign debt crisis, Juncker once again defended the EU's response at the height of the crisis, “an aircraft that needed to be repaired midflight”, and pledged to make the troika more democratic and controlled by the national parliaments. However, he also promised to “implement plans B, if the growth projections should be worse than anticipated”, in order to limit the impact of the adjustment plans. He also said that he wished to have social impact studies carried out before implementing any adjustment programmes.
These words, designed to win over the European left wing, did not necessarily hit the spot and even led to booing from the right-wing extremists and the ECR group when Juncker defended the single currency and stated that this helped to bring the member states together, rather than divide them. Although Pittella said that he was satisfied with Juncker's answers, Gabi Zimmer's radical left group was sceptical. “What are you going to replace the troika and the IMF with?”, she said. She now intends to judge Juncker on his initiatives.
Another dossier to be cleared up: Juncker promised “maximum transparency” on the TTIP dossier, stressing that the Europeans should be fully up to date with what was in play with the US. He does, however, have one red line. He will not be the European Parliament's “aide-de-camp” any more than he will be the “Council's secretary”, he warned, stressing his intentions of maintaining his independence.
A victory for “European democracy” hailed by some
Ultimately, however, the MEPs voted on more than just the candidate and his personal qualities. For many groups, it was also a question of validating the first real exercise of European democracy, as Juncker and Schulz put it. The president of the European Parliament described Juncker's election as “historic”, as, for the first time, it takes the European election results directly into account. “European democracy has spoken”, Juncker added.
Pittella even described the process as “irreversible”, even though the heads of state decided on 27 June that they would shortly reassess this “Spitzenkandidaten” process. The Liberals expressed the same satisfaction. “By voting for Mr Juncker, we are consolidating European democracy and the fact that the voters were able to select the President of the European Commission”, said Verhofstadt.
“I do not share this ambient euphoria”, said Zimmer, leader of the GUE/NGL, who described Juncker's election as “a very small step” for European democracy. “We have just started to take baby steps”. (SP)