Farmer Daul ploughs ahead in EPP-ED leadership race

Joseph Daul, a farmer and native of Strasbourg, is odds-on favourite to become the chairman of the European Parliament’s biggest political group, the centre-right EPP-ED, if the current leader Hans-Gert Pöttering is elected president of the Parliament from January, according to EPP-ED sources.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s interior minister and the right’s leading candidate to succeed Jacques Chirac as president, will meet Pöttering in Brussels on Friday (8 September) to lobby for Daul to lead the 263 member-strong group.

Daul is the best-placed MEP to take over from Pöttering as he commands broad support among the group’s largest delegation, the 49 German members. A German speaker, he is widely respected within the group and the Parliament as the chairman of the agriculture committee and chairman of the group of conference chairs. He faces few serious challengers from other large national delegations. An EPP-ED MEP said that his Spanish colleague Iñigo Mendez de Vigo "would be it [EPP-ED chairman] in a heartbeat if he was put up". Mendez de Vigo, who speaks four languages, was a major player in the Convention on the European Constitution. But the People’s Party (PP) has given no hints that it would back him, seeming to favour EPP-ED vice-president Jaime Mayor Oreja who does not command widespread support. The Italian delegation, which is made up of four separate parties, is unlikely to put up a candidate with serious prospects.

Other possibilities include Dutch CDA MEP Camiel Eurlings, who drafted the Parliament’s report on Turkey’s membership preparations, and Sweden’s Gunnar Hökmark. But the two are ranked as outsiders.

But there are some reservations within the EPP-ED about electing Daul as leader. Some MEPs question whether the election of a farmer who does not speak English and is strongly attached to keeping the Parliament in Strasbourg sends the right signal about the group.

The EPP-ED will elect a new chairman around 16 January if Pöttering is elected as president. However, officials expect a decision on a successor to be finalised in mid-November when the EPP-ED is to confirm that Pöttering is its candidate for president of Parliament to take over from socialist Josep Borrell.

The presidential election will spark a wave of changes throughout the Parliament’s positions. Having the president will cost the EPP-ED two of its current seven vice-presidencies while the Socialists will use their share of posts liberated by Borrell’s departure to gain an extra vice-president or an additional committee chair. If Daul becomes EPP-ED chairman, he will also have to be replaced as agriculture committee chairman.

As European Voice went to press, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats was debating whether to propose a candidate against Pöttering. ALDE leader Graham Watson said this week that whether they put up an MEP or not his group "has a great interest to pursue the debate on reform of the European Parliament in this election". Officials commented that ALDE might not challenge Pöttering in return for commitments on reform.

Joseph Daul, a farmer and native of Strasbourg, is odds-on favourite to become the chairman of the European Parliament’s biggest political group, the centre-right EPP-ED, if the current leader Hans-Gert Pöttering is elected president of the Parliament from January, according to EPP-ED sources.