Scramble
to lead European Parliament
Schulz
appears unwilling to cede his post.
By MAÏA DE LA BAUME
9/30/16, 5:27 AM CET
A
broken deal between the European Parliament’s two main blocs has
turned the election for the assembly’s president — a foregone
conclusion the last time around — into a free-for-all.
Martin Schulz, the
current president from the Socialists & Democrats, looks
reluctant to honor his promise to Manfred Weber of the conservative
European People’s Party to step down after his second
two-and-a-half-year term and make way for the EPP — which won’t
give up without a fight.
While the 2014
secret ballot among MEPs was largely ignored beyond Brussels and
Strasbourg, the coming contest on January 17 has some of the suspense
of a real election, largely thanks to behind-the-scenes maneuvering
by Schulz, who hasn’t declared his candidacy. Along with the
president, MEPs will renew the vice presidents, committee chairs and
group presidents.
“This election is
a leap into the unknown,” said Charles de Marcilly, who heads the
Brussels office of the Fondation Robert Schuman, a French think tank.
“But it will certainly re-inject more politics into the Parliament
engine.”
Split chamber
It wasn’t supposed
to be this exciting. Under the 2014 negotiations which made
Jean-Claude Juncker president of the European Commission, Schulz
would get another term running the Parliament, then hand over to
someone from the opposing bloc.
“The
assumption was that the president of the European Council had to be a
Socialist. And that didn’t happen” — Udo Bullmann, German MEP
Since then, the
German Social Democrat appears to have lost the support of prominent
European center-left leaders and the Conservatives have fielded a
motley crew of candidates, including a former spokesperson for Silvio
Berlusconi and the former presenter of an Irish reality TV show
called “Celebrity Farm.” The Liberals, who were also part of the
2014 power-sharing deal, are forwarding Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt
and the Greens insist it’s a woman’s turn.
Since no political
group holds a majority in the 751-seat assembly, winning the
presidential contest requires a coalition — hence the power-sharing
deal between the EPP and the S&D to take turns holding the
presidency, with each group supporting the other’s candidate. The
EPP has 215 seats and the S&D has 189. If that coalition breaks
down, Schulz would need to find more than 180 votes from among the
assembly’s seven other factions.
MEPs and Parliament
officials say Schulz has been working stealthily for months to
convince colleagues he should stay on in the role, arguing that it is
important not to let all three EU presidencies be held by
center-right politicians: Like Juncker, European Council President
Donald Tusk is a member of the EPP.
But many MEPs are
weary of Schulz’s presidential approach to the job and his high
profile in the media, saying what they really need is a speaker of
the house to chair plenary sessions and organize parliamentary work.
“The Parliament
can be politicized in a different way, in a more inclusive way,”
said Alojz Peterle, former prime minister of Slovenia and one of the
EPP’s candidates for the presidency.
Juncker, however,
has thrown his weight behind Schulz, arguing that EU institutions
should be led for the next two-and-a-half years “as they have been
thus far.”
“Europe is facing
difficult times and at such a moment it is good for Brussels
institutions to work well together,” Juncker told the German
magazine Der Spiegel, arguing for the continuance of what he called
“a proven team” consisting not just of Schulz and Tusk, but Weber
and Gianni Pittella as the floor leaders of the main center-right and
center-left blocs.
The new jobs would
be spread proportionately among all the Parliament's political groups
While members of the
EPP say the 2014 deal must be respected, many in the S&D group
argue that it was rendered obsolete when Poland’s Tusk got the
presidency of the Council at the end of 2014 — a post they had
expected to go to the center-left’s Enrico Letta, a former Italian
prime minister whose candidacy was scuppered by his successor in
Rome, Matteo Renzi .
“The assumption
was that the president of the European Council had to be a
Socialist,” said Udo Bullmann, a German MEP from the S&D group.
“And that didn’t happen.”
Although national
leaders like Renzi don’t get a direct vote in the Parliament
presidency, their endorsement matters — and even some center-left
leaders are unenthusiastic about Schulz.
One European
diplomat said that despite “good personal relations” between
Schulz and François Hollande, the French president is likely to back
EPP candidate Alain Lamassoure, a longtime French MEP and former
minister. A senior official in the European Parliament said Hollande
had told him that Schulz had lost the support of both Paris and Rome.
Manfred
Weber, the 44-year-old president of the EPP which is the largest
political group in the assembly, is emerging as a key player in the
contest.
“He told me:
‘Neither Renzi nor I support Schulz,” the official said.
However, Italian
officials and MEPs said Renzi’s government still supports Schulz.
“He is a Socialist and has helped Rome on austerity and migration,”
said one Italian official, adding the caveat however that “Schulz
has stepped on many toes” and made “many enemies” in Europe.
Angela Merkel hasn’t
tipped her hand yet, but German MEPs wouldn’t necessarily back the
conservative chancellor “if she pleads for Schulz’s cause,”
said one official, adding: “She no longer has the absolute
authority she had before.”
Manfred Weber, the
44-year-old president of the EPP which is the largest political group
in the assembly, is emerging as a key player in the contest. Despite
the S&D’s objections to having a triumvirate of EPP presidents
in Brussels, his group intends to select a candidate by December 13.
So far, the declared EPP candidates are Lamassoure, Peterle, the
former Irish TV presenter Mairead McGuinness and Italy’s Antonio
Tajani, a former commissioner and a spokesperson for Berlusconi.
However, Weber may
also be coming under pressure to clear the path for Schulz. Der
Spiegel reported that Juncker and Schulz took Weber to lunch at the
Commission and urged him not to upset the current cohabitation
between the EPP and S&D. Weber and Schulz get along “very
well,” according to one Parliament official. He’s not the only
conservative to like Schulz: Karl-Heinz Florenz, another German EPP
member, praised Schulz for raising the assembly’s profile.
“I would be happy
to see him at the top team of the EU,” Florenz told the German
newspaper Bild. “He did his job well and he is a strong European.”
Contacted by POLITICO, Florenz said he stood by the comment.
Jacopo Barigazzi
contributed to this article.
Authors:
Maïa de La Baume
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