Parliament wants Europe-wide election of Commission president

Proposal would formalize the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ process used in 2014.

MEPs pushed this week to create a Europe-wide campaign for the European Commission presidency as part of an effort to boost the EU’s democratic legitimacy.

The European Parliament voted Wednesday night to approve a set of proposed changes to EU electoral law that include formalizing a process for electing a Commission president that was first used in 2014, by having each political party group nominate an “EU-wide” lead candidate for the post.

Before 2014, the Commission president was chosen by national governments — though the EU treaty says EU leaders must “take into account” the results of the European Parliament elections. But last year the main parliamentary groups agreed they would approve the candidate chosen by the party that had won the most seats, which in that case was the European People’s Party.

The new proposal calls for that process to be enshrined into law. MEPs approved it as part of a new parliamentary report that found the so-called “Spitzenkandidaten” (meaning leading candidate in German) system to be a success in the last election, saying that “nominating lead candidates increases the interest of citizens in European elections.”

The resolution outlining the changes was adopted by a Parliament vote of 315 to 234 but because the proposals affect electoral laws at national level they would have to be approved by all EU countries before taking effect. MEPs want that to happen before the next European elections are held in 2019. Last time there were two vocal opponents of the Spitzenkandidaten process in the Council: the U.K.’s David Cameron and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

German MEP Jo Leinen, one of the Parliament’s two rapporteurs on the reform issues, called the vote on the process “an important step forward to make the European elections more transparent and make them more European.”

The proposals seek to regularize a variety of different electoral systems across the EU. In some European countries, citizens can vote only for a list of candidates, without changing their order of preference; in other countries, they can show their preference for one or more of the candidates.

“The elections to the European Parliament continue to be extremely national,” said Danuta Hübner, a Polish MEP from the European People’s Party and a former European commissioner, and the other co-rapporteur on the proposal. “We hope to increase citizens’ interest in participating in this important element of European decision-making.”

MEPs also voted to introduce mandatory vote thresholds for obtaining seats in the European Parliament, a proposal which caused controversy in some EU countries. These thresholds would range from 3 percent to 5 percent of the vote and would generally affect larger countries.

“Compared to today’s system, this means that Spain and Germany would need to introduce thresholds,” the European Parliament said in a statement.

The report said the measure was important “for safeguarding the functioning of the European Parliament, since it will avoid further fragmentation.”

Other proposals included allowing EU nationals to vote in European elections even if they are living abroad. The Parliament said several countries had not made it possible for citizens living abroad to vote in the 2014 European elections.