Strasbourg, 23/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The German national, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who is a French MEP for the Green Party, announced in a television interview that he would be standing as a candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission. Mr Cohn-Bendit is already standing for elections for the President of the Green/European Free Alliance group on the occasion of changes to the EP half-way through the current term. He justified his standing for President of the Commission by the fact that it was necessary to encourage all the other political groups to nominate a candidate before the European elections in 2004.
Speaking to journalists in Strasbourg, the German President of the EPP/ED group, Hans-Gert Pöttering, said that his group wanted every European political party to put forward a candidate for the Commission Presidency and praised the political motivation behind Mr Cohn-Bendit's candidature, while highlighting that he still had to win the backing of the Green party.
The President of the GUE/NGL group, Francis Wurtz (France), regretted that the announcement of Mr Cohn-Bendit's candidature might add greater pressure to the race to "presidentialise" the way the Commission and the European institutions work. He highlighted the need to improve the current system, perhaps by the President of the European Commission being elected by the European Parliament, and told EUROPE that the "institutions have to be brought closer to the citizens rather than giving them a King".