Bonn bids to avert clash with MEPs over Santer’s successor

Date: 04/02/1999

By Gareth Harding

GERMANY is planning to involve the European Parliament in selecting the next Commission president in an attempt to head off MEPs' threats to reject the candidate chosen by EU governments.

The move follows recent demands from the Parliament and Commission President Jacques Santer that Union leaders delay nominating a successor to Santer until the results of the 10-13 June Euro-elections are known. This would mean postponing the planned 3-4 June summit in Cologne at which heads of state and government are due to choose their nominee.

Senior MEPs have warned that if the decision is not delayed, governments will find it harder to win the Parliament's approval for their favoured candidate.

Some have gone even further, with German Christian Democrat MEP Elmar Brok insisting that Europe's voters, not its leaders, should decide who becomes the next Commission chief. He has warned that if EU heads of state and government "nominate someone from a political party which loses the elections, they will not win the backing of Parliament".

Parliament President José Maria Gil-Robles claimed after a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Bonn last week that he had managed to "convince the Chancellor that the nomination should be made after the elections, when the voters have chosen their representatives". The Spaniard added that Schröder had promised to raise the matter with other EU leaders.

But German officials insist that although Bonn is sympathetic to the Parliament's argument, it has no intention of changing the date of the Cologne summit.

Instead, in a move which could have profound implications for the institutional balance of power in the EU, Germany is planning to involve the Parliament in the process of nominating the next Commission president.

Although the Strasbourg-based assembly will have the right to veto the candidate chosen by EU governments this time around, it will not have any formal right to be involved in the nomination procedure itself.

However, Bonn has suggested that the heads of the Parliament's political groups should be consulted before the summit, once EU leaders have a firm candidate in mind.

The move reflects a recognition that the Parliament's threats cannot be taken lightly in the wake of last month's vote on a motion to censure the Commission over allegations of fraud and mismanagement. Although Santer's team escaped dismissal, the size of the vote against it demonstrated that MEPs are increasingly prepared to use all the powers at their disposal to ensure their views are not ignored.

However, many member states are fiercely opposed to any move to politicise the choice of president. "The Commission should be above party politics and its president should not be at the mercy of political groups," said one diplomat.

Last month, MEPs adopted a report drawn up by Brok calling on political groups to nominate presidential candidates in the run-up to the Euro-election campaign. Although few parties are likely to heed the assembly's call, Brok insists that Union

leaders will not be able to ignore its views.

"EU leaders will be very careful to nominate someone who will not be rejected by the Parliament," he said. "They do not want to give it a chance to flex its muscles and extend its powers even further."

MEPs say they are confident that Germany will agree to change the date of the EU summit, putting it off until after the Euro-elections. A spokesman for Gil-Robles said that even if Union leaders opted instead to "offend the European Parliament and its citizens" by nominating the president a week before polling day, the election would turn into a "plebiscite" on their choice.