BRUSSELS, July 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) – EU leaders nominated German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president on Tuesday, as part of a package of top jobs hammered out over three days of negotiations.
They also elected Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as the next European Council President and recommended Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell as EU foreign policy chief.
The package also proposes International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde as the next president of the European Central Bank, with a formal nomination to follow at a later date.
The debate over top jobs was triggered by European Parliament elections in May.
Tuesday’s outcome was “worth waiting for,” Tusk said after the summit, noting among other things that leaders had achieved a perfect gender balance. If confirmed, von der Leyen would be the commission’s first female president.
The final appointments package is also supposed to respect the EU’s political and geographical spread, while representing both larger and smaller countries.
Von der Leyen is a member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and Michel is a liberal, while Borrell is of the socialist group.
However, the nominees all come from western EU member states. Tusk expressed hope that parliament would elect a president from the east of the bloc.
Von der Leyen must now be approved by a simple majority in the EU legislature. But most parliamentary groups had vowed that they would only approve a lead candidate who campaigned in May’s EU elections, a requirement that von der Leyen does not meet.
Iratxe Garcia, the head of the socialist group in parliament, called the proposal “deeply disappointing.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed von der Leyen’s nomination, while noting that she was forced to abstain during the selection process, due to opposition within her government coalition with the Social Democrats.
Von der Leyen emerged as a surprise candidate after a previous attempt to nominate Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans failed.
The idea – hashed out by Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands – was fiercely opposed by other leaders, including members of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).
“Timmermans is no go,” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Tuesday, speaking for the Visegrad group of eastern EU members, which also includes Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Timmermans, who is commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s right hand man in the commission, has clashed with several central and eastern European governments over reforms that threaten to undermine the rule of law.
Under the deal struck Tuesday, he is to remain a commission vice president, alongside current EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager who had also emerged as a key contender for the commission presidency after the May elections.
The EPP’s lead candidate for the job, German EU lawmaker Manfred Weber, had failed earlier in the process to garner enough support from EU leaders, despite his group coming first in the polls. On Tuesday he formally withdrew his candidacy.
The EU elections weakened the two largest groups in parliament – the EPP and the Party of European Socialists – making it harder to build majorities.
The parliament held its first session in Strasbourg on Monday but postponed the appointment of its new president until Wednesday, to avoid presenting leaders with a foregone conclusion that could hamper their efforts.
EU leaders proposed appointing a socialist president to the parliament for the first half of its five-year term, followed by Weber. The decision is up to EU lawmakers, however.
The commission proposes new EU legislation and ensures existing laws are implemented. Its competences also include conducting trade policy on behalf of the bloc and enforcing competition rules. The president oversees a staff of more than 30,000.
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