The upcoming EU election was meant to be a shining example of the Europeanisation of democracy. But with the once-promising lead candidate system dying a slow death, it seems the elections will be a purely national race in each EU country.
This weekend, the first of the party manifestos and lead candidate choices will be voted on, at the European Greens’ congress.
However, with the election season now officially kicked off, it becomes painfully obvious that there is already one fatality to mourn in the various campaigns: the lead candidate system [or Spitzenkandidaten, in German and the EU jargon].
When Ursula von der Leyen was picked as Commission president in 2019 – after the whole Spitzenkandidaten process was thrown under the bus – it was widely regarded as a step back for democracy. “It remains a scandal”, the German newspaper die Zeit titled at the time.
While von der Leyen promised to revamp the system and ensure that the lead candidate process would be filled with life again, it is now more dead than ever before, with mere placeholders taking the lead candidate positions of their respective European parties.
The Socialists were the first to hammer a nail in the coffin of the lead candidate system, when they elected Nicolas Schmit, a widely unknown name in Europe and at best a second-tier Commissioner, to lead them into the election.
Compared to Frans Timmermans and Martin Schulz, who led the Socialists in the elections in 2019 and 2014, respectively, Schmit is at best a bantamweight.
The Left party was soon to follow, by electing Walter Baier – an Austrian communist who has practically no chance of even making it into Parliament as their top pick. For comparison, in 2014, the Left sent former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras into the race for Commission president.
Others, like the far-right Identity and Democracy and the European Conservatives and Reformers, even refused to have a common lead candidate altogether, while the Liberals will send several people into the race at once and the biggest European party, the conservative EPP, has stayed mysteriously silent.
While the importance of the EU as a political institution has risen considerably in the past four years – from the historic push for a European industrial policy to killing the combustion engine or the war in Ukraine – its democratic component seems to be weaker than ever.
Instead of Europeanisation, what we got is a more fractured party system where national, rather than European, forms of organisation seem to have prevailed.
Even in Germany, the originator of the Spitzenkandidaten system, national interest seems to trump the European spirit.
Take the liberal FDP for example. While the party is pushing in their manifesto to transform the EU into a fully-fledged European Federation, they still opted for an “us Germans against the EU” rhetoric during their European Party Congress on Sunday.
“We also need such a personality in Brussels and Strasbourg to represent German interests,” FDP chief and Finance Minister Christian Lindner said regarding the national lead candidate of the liberals – not mentioning the EU liberals at all.
While the European Parliament vowed it would vote only for a Commission president who ran as a lead candidate in 2019 – a promise they ultimately broke – this time they will likely not even try to cling to this illusion.
The Roundup
The gap between official and real-world car emissions has grown by 80% in the past five years, despite advanced testing procedures in place to prevent such a discrepancy, a new study has found.
The centre-right European People’s Party, liberal Renew, Socialists and Democrats, Greens, and national-conservative ECR all urged EU leaders to agree on further financial aid for Ukraine’s defence efforts during the extraordinary European Council summit starting on Thursday.
France’s freshly-appointed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal vowed to take down bureaucracy and regulatory burden in a major speech in the National Assembly on Tuesday, joining a growing call across the EU to cut back on red tape.
The Catalan pro-independence party has threatened to withdraw its support for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s socialist party if they do not a pass “comprehensive” amnesty law to pardon all offences committed by Catalan separatist forces between 2012 and 2023.
Germany’s TÜV Nord Group is launching the world’s “first and only comprehensive certification” scheme for critical raw materials along the entire value chain – from exploration to extraction and processing, up to the final product.
European NGOs have tested the blood of the EU’s political top brass and found several banned “forever chemicals”, upping the pressure on Brussels to put the bloc’s chemical regulation back on the agenda.
The European Commission presented on Wednesday new recommendations on vaccine-preventable cancers, setting targets for member states to boost human papillomaviruses (HPV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination.
While EU member states are expected to pledge continued military support to Ukraine at a decisive summit on Thursday, hurdles for a future funding scheme remain.
The French National Assembly approved a bill on Tuesday night to enshrine in the Constitution a law that “guarantees freedom” for women to have access to abortion.
Last but not least, for more policy news, check out this week’s Green Brief and the Health Brief.
Look out for….
- Special European Council on Thursday.
- Commissioner Stella Kyriakides receives Amy Pope, director general of International Organisation for Migration, on Thursday.
- Informal meeting of foreign affairs ministers (Gymnich) on Friday-Saturday.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
