The European Commission. The great selling plate

Our form-guide for the race to be next European Commission president

IT IS a horse-race in which the declared runners carry such heavy handicaps that it is hard to see any of them winning. The conditions are perfect for an outsider to come up on the inside rail. With only a month to go before European Union leaders are due to pick a new president of the European Commission, to serve for the next five years, the field is almost disconcertingly wide open.

The job is critical in European politics. The commission has the sole right to propose EU laws, which now account for half of all new legislation in the 25-member block. It is the guardian of existing EU rules. It initiates actions against members for such offences as illegal state aid, running excessive budget deficits or having filthy beaches. And it is meant to identify the “general European interest”. The commission president can thus combine the roles of a visionary, a deal-maker and a disciplinarian.

The difficulty in finding a candidate to take over from Italy's Romano Prodi stems from some onerous and arbitrary requirements. In theory EU leaders can choose anybody they like. In practice a new president must meet a series of conditions. It is widely held that the president should come from the ranks of prime ministers or former prime ministers. That the most successful recent president, Jacques Delors, failed this test, and that such former prime ministers as Jacques Santer of Luxembourg and Mr Prodi have been notably unsuccessful, have not dented leaders' prejudice in favour of one of their own.

The demands of the European Parliament complicate matters. It insists that any selection must reflect the results of the European elections in mid-June. Formally, the parliament cannot veto the choice, but a parliamentary rejection would be awkward. The centre-right seems likely, but not certain, to emerge as the biggest single parliamentary block, which points towards selecting a centre-right candidate. Because Mr Prodi comes from a big, southern country, the new president would best hail from a smaller, northern European country. And to assuage France's sensitivity about the growing dominance of English, a commission president who speaks little or no French is probably out.

Finding a candidate who ticks all these boxes is hard. One possibility is Jean-Claude Juncker, a centre-right prime minister from Luxembourg, indubitably a small country. But there is a feeling that it would be faintly ridiculous to appoint a third commission president from Luxembourg, when Germany, Britain and France have held the post only once each. The British also suspect that Mr Juncker would be in the pocket of the Franco-German alliance. His appearance at last year's “chocolate” summit, when France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg proposed deeper EU defence co-operation heightens such suspicions. But other centre-right candidates - Wolfgang Schussel from Austria and Jean-Luc Dehaene of Belgium, for example - have been floated without gaining much support.

Faced with such an uninspiring field, European leaders might have to abandon some of their criteria. Could the parliament be persuaded to accept a strong candidate from outside the dominant political group? Or perhaps leaders should go for somebody who has never been a prime minister - such as a member of the current commission?

Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister, has emerged as a new favourite in the past week or two. He is a member of Europe's liberal group, which could pose a problem with the parliament, but he is liked by the French and Germans. Unfortunately, he also organised the chocolate summit and is seen as a dyed-in-the-wool federalist - making him even more suspect to Britain than is Mr Juncker.

This points to a wider problem. Any candidate pushed by France is automatically suspect in Britain, and vice-versa. To match British wariness of Mr Juncker and Mr Verhofstadt, the French are hostile to candidates floated by Britain, including two current commissioners, Antonio Vitorino and Chris Patten (the latter pushed also by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a former French president), and the European Parliament's Pat Cox. There is a good German candidate who might be acceptable in both Paris and London: Gunter Verheugen, who has been a highly successful enlargement commissioner. But he has no backing from the Germans, who have their eyes on the job of vice-president of the commission in charge of economic reform.

Some reckon that, as Ireland holds the rotating EU presidency, an Irish candidate could yet emerge. The Irish have an advantage in that they are native English-speakers without being British. Some suggest that Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, who is leading the search, is secretly angling for the job himself. This week Mr Ahern issued a fairly convincing denial. That leaves Mr Cox, who speaks good French and has impeccable EU credentials. He is a liberal, though the parliament might accept one of its own. But one French official sniffs that he is “too lightweight”.

Sooner or later somebody will have to emerge as front-runner. This time round, no single country can veto a candidate (as Britain did in 1994), because under the Nice treaty the choice is one for a majority vote. The British are increasingly fretful that, in the absence of plausible alternatives, they may end up with Mr Verhofstadt. “You can't beat somebody with nobody,” muses one British high-up.

The broader question is whether the paucity of the field says something about the job. Two weak presidents in a row have seriously diminished the credibility of the commission and its boss. The next president will have a tough job managing a commission that has now swelled to 25 members and also has a growing credibility problem with big countries like France and Germany. Yet it would be a mistake to write off the commission. Its position is well-entrenched. For better or worse, its next president will still wield great power in the EU.

Feature looks at the race to become the next European Commission President.

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