At least one election will no longer be dominated by Brexit: pending a parliamentary vote next week, the new European Commission is set to be sworn in on 1 December (see EUROPE 12374/1).
EU lawyers appear to have found a way to allow the Commission to function with 27 members, so even if the UK fails to nominate a commissioner by midnight on Friday – the deadline set under an infringement procedure launched last week (see EUROPE 12369/4) – it will not derail the new executive.
According to a document seen by Politico, the UK’s delay “cannot undermine the regular functioning of the Union and its institutions”. However, the document, which has been examined on Friday by EU ambassadors before being sent to the Council, does have a placeholder for a “UK reply, if any”.
MEPs gave the initial go-ahead to replacement nominees from Hungary, France and Romania last week. EU ministers at the Council will do the same on Monday once they are presented with the document, containing the updated list of commissioners-designate. President-elect Ursula von der Leyen will then present her team to MEPs on Wednesday in Strasbourg, followed by a plenary vote.
All’s well that ends well. Except it’s not clear how and when the UK will handle the repercussions of the infringement procedure. It’s difficult to see the government nominating a commissioner before the 12 December election, though government spokespeople have insisted the UK will obey the law. So it looks like another game of ‘extend and pretend’, letting the procedure run its course until the country eventually leaves the EU.
Back in Brexit election land: prime minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn held their first leaders’ debate on Tuesday, with Mr Johnson driving home his ‘Get Brexit done’ message while Mr Corbyn insisted he would renegotiate a deal with the EU and put it to a second referendum.
Labour’s newly launched election manifesto goes into further detail on what the party wants from a post-Brexit relationship with the EU, including ‘access’ to the European Arrest Warrant system. Eurosceptic think tank Open Europe says the demand will be “difficult to negotiate” as it has never been granted to any non-member state, not even an EEA member like Norway.
Outgoing European Council president Donald Tusk invoked Brexit, Trump and populist Hungarian president Viktor Orbán in an impassioned speech at the European People’s Party Congress in Croatia this week (see EUROPE 12373/2), imploring his colleagues to speak the truth and counter fake news. “It is so easy to win people’s hearts by those who shout in a loud voice: ‘get up off your knees, make your country great again, take back control!”', he said. “After five years I am fed up with being the European Bureaucrat-in-Chief. I am ready to fight. And I hope you are, too.” (Sarah Collins)