The leaders of the national parties making up the ‘European Greens’ expressed their support on Friday 31 March for the Spitzenkandidaten process, whereby the leading candidate of a European political family presides over the European Commission if he or she wins the European elections and manages to secure a political majority in the new European Parliament.
The Spitzenkandidaten process is “the strongest democratic tool at our disposal to give EU citizens a direct say in deciding who would be the next European Commission President”, said the Green leaders, rejecting the “horse-trading” that takes place in the European Council when appointing top European politicians.
At the next ‘European Greens’ congress in June in Vienna, the European political party’s executive committee will propose to the member parties that two co-Spitzenkandidaten be nominated in early 2024 and adopt a political manifesto for the European elections.
Eager to assume responsibilities within new majorities at European level, as is already the case in several countries (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, etc.), the European Greens promise to block “the normalisation of the far-right by mainstream political forces, especially the ‘European People’s Party’”. Such a rapprochement endangers the European project, they argue, by undermining fundamental rights and the ‘European Green Deal’ and by advocating the construction of walls on the EU’s borders.
Referring to the inter-institutional negotiations on the revision of European political parties and their foundation (see EUROPE 13153/22), Green leaders are also alarmed by the EU Council’s attempt to relegate parties from non-EU countries to the status of second-class members of a European political party.
In the 2019 European elections, German Ska Keller and Dutch Bas Eickhout were the co-Spitzenkandidaten of the European Greens (see EUROPE 12146/13).
See the statement of the ‘European Greens’: https://aeur.eu/f/66c (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)