The President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), Karl-Heinz Lambertz, gave his vision for making the process of selecting the future candidate for President of the European Commission truly operational at a press conference on Wednesday 26 June, ahead of the CoR plenary session.
"I am a defender of the Spitzenkandidat, and have been since 2014", the president said at the outset. "But at the time, I said that this system would only be really valid and definitive if it were combined with a European electoral constituency", he explained. For him, the Spitzenkandidaten remain "an error in goods", since they are elected on a national basis. The President did not hesitate to go further and suggested a direct election for the President of the European Commission.
But, noting the state of power relations in the institutional triangle, this "Bermuda triangle" in his own words, it seemed very difficult to the president to reach an agreement, which will necessarily lead to the "lowest common denominator", especially since the grand coalition is no longer sufficient within the European Parliament to secure a solid majority.
For him, a solution must be found as soon as possible, because the results of the European elections do not give rise to any kind of optimism. "If I add up those who are not going to vote (about 49%) and those who have voted for rather Eurosceptic parties (about 23%), I discover a huge amount of convincing work to do", he analysed.
Recently, the Committee of the Regions submitted a series of proposals compiling the opinions of recent months and years to strengthen the regional and local dimension and thereby revitalising the European project (see EUROPE 12272/24).
The Heads of State or Government are meeting on Sunday 30 June at the end of the day to try once again to agree on a "package" of names to preside over the European institutions under the next mandate (see EUROPE 12279/1). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)