The competition for the position of the next president of the European Commission has already started in the corridors of Brussels, but the members of the European Union are not yet close to agreeing on the rules of the game.
Among the possible candidates to replace the Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker in the fall of 2019, the name of Frenchman Michel Barnier, currently the EU's chief negotiator for Brexit, is most often mentioned.
His candidacy was also seen in 2014, but then the European People's Party (EPP) decided to re-elect Junker, writes France Press (AFP).
Junker was then put forward as the "leading candidate" (Spitzenkandidat), according to the German name for the procedure by which European parties nominate the first on their lists for the European elections. The idea was that the President of the Commission should be the first on the list of the party that won the most seats in the European Parliament.
The EP, which elects the head of the Commission by voting, wants that method to be used again because, according to AFP, it believes that this will increase transparency and strengthen the political legitimacy of both the EP itself and the Commission.
However, European treaties give EU member states the power to appoint a candidate for EC president by a qualified majority, although those treaties vaguely require that "the EP elections be taken into account."
Several European leaders, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, opposed the "leading candidate" method and are expected to repeat it at the summit in Brussels on February 23, writes AFP.
"There was frustration in several European capitals in 2014 because the procedure that led to Junker's nomination was not transparent enough," said one source.
Some believe that this system leads to the politicization of the EC, which is considered harmful. Others fear a situation in which Eurosceptic parties would achieve success in the European elections, which could lead to the election of their candidate.
This is why, as AFP reports, MEPs are expected to act more strongly at next Sunday's session in Strasbourg.
"The European Parliament will reject any candidate for Commission President who is not nominated as a 'leading candidate' before the EP elections," warned the head of the EPP parliamentary group in the European Parliament, German Manfred Weber.
According to him, if EU member governments try to reject that principle, then "they will have to explain why, despite the big speeches about the necessity of democratic changes in Europe, they are not really ready to give up non-transparency and secrecy".
And Junker's chief of staff, the German Martin Selmer, called for the 2019 procedure to be repeated in 2014.
In a message on Twitter, he expressed the view that the winning "leading candidate", who "campaigned throughout Europe and won the largest number of mandates", would have stronger legitimacy as EC president than a person "elected behind closed doors".
Since the formula to be chosen has not yet been chosen, there are still no official candidates.
Michel Barnier, the former European Commissioner and several times a minister in the French government, has never said that he would run for office again, but his current duties put him in the foreground, according to AFP.
"He did a very good job," a senior European official said, adding that "the way he handled Brexit increased confidence in the Commission."
Another name mentioned is Danish Margret Vestager, the competition commissioner who dealt several blows to American Internet companies.
The possibility of candidacy was not rejected by the French socialist Pierre Moscovisi, the Commissioner for the Economy.
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