Lessons for EU and UK in fractious Juncker episode

July 16th will see Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker elected European Commission president by the European Parliament. He will be the thirteenth holder of this office since 1958. Juncker's election is a done deal.

The real drama in this process took place two weeks ago, when EU member state leaders outvoted the UK (and Hungary) to make Juncker the sole official candidate for the job. This was the first time the presidency nomination process was decided by majority against the wishes of any member state – let alone a heavy hitter such as the UK. Juncker’s not-so-secret weapon was to have been Spitzenkandidat (“top candidate”) of the European People’s Party (EPP) in the recent European Parliament elections – the European political party of which Fine Gael is a member, and which won the most seats across the EU.

Opposition to Juncker's candidacy would thus have risked accusations against EU leaders of promise-breaking and disrespect for European electorates – making it political poison, regardless of what UK prime minister David Cameron might think.

Juncker’s fractious election process carries two interlinked lessons – one of them about UK politics, the other about the EU.

As regards the UK, its dogged yet unsuccessful campaign to deny the rather harmless Juncker the commission presidency has been described by commentator Philip Stephens as the latest evidence of Cameron’s “insouciant incompetence” in EU policy matters.

Cameron has indeed made a succession of poor moves in EU questions: pulling his Conservative party out of the EPP in 2009 (and thus dramatically reducing Tory influence); needlessly making referendums a legal sine qua non of every single transfer of sovereignty to EU level in 2011, no matter how minute (and therefore denying future UK governments badly needed room to negotiate necessary changes at EU level); woefully mishandling negotiations on what became the fiscal treaty in 2011; needlessly promising an in-out referendum on EU membership in 2013 within four years (thereby jeopardising the most important economic and political relationship the UK has); and now running headlong into defeat over Juncker.

Two masters

Rather than incompetence, however, what such events arguably demonstrate is the ultimate unattainability of Cameron’s attempts to serve two masters: placating domestic Euroscepticism, on the one hand (seen as necessary to continued Conservative Party electoral success) and representing UK interests at EU level on the other.

The blame for finding himself in this strategic blind alley is not entirely Cameron's. Like all UK prime ministers, he inherits the burden of the UK media's and electorate's appetite for confrontationalism at EU level. This taste – unwisely first indulged by Margaret Thatcher – has for long led to a situation whereby, as Tony Blair once observed, success (and compromise) in European negotiations is regarded as defeat domestically, and defeat (and defiance) in Europe is regarded as success at home.

Interestingly, Cameron’s defiance regarding Juncker has been far from domestically unpopular. He plays to this: remarkably, Juncker’s nomination went to a vote (and inevitable defeat) only because Cameron insisted on it. The trouble with all this flirting with the creature that is domestic Euroscepticism, however, is that one unintentionally ends up marrying it. And Cameron’s unceasing manoeuvring to maintain domestic electoral popularity among Eurosceptics has come at a heavy price. The UK is losing influence.

Sub

optimal relationship Cameron now has a sub

optimal relationship with a soon-to-be powerful office- holder in Europe – Juncker. And, most dangerously, he has lessened his chances of success in his high-stakes gamble on selling a “reformed” Europe in a 2017 UK in-out referendum.

What does the Juncker affair tell us about the EU, however?

The fact that a member state has been outvoted in nominating a commission president is neither surprising nor problematic. True, the EU normally acts by consensus. But it must have majority voting rules to deal with where no such consensus exists.

Member states – including the UK – agreed to this by inserting majority-voting rules throughout the governing treaties, including regarding the election of commission presidents. We might thus legitimately fret about the impact outvoting the UK over Juncker will have on British referendums. But we need not worry regarding its impact on the EU as a whole. The alternative – a veto for every member state on the commission presidency – could be used by individual member states to seek to ensure ineffective weaklings were installed in the presidency.

But how about the introduction of the Spitzenkandidat system, whereby the nominated candidate of the party which gains the most seats in the European Parliament election, has first call to be nominated commission president?

Proponents argue that having Spitzenkandidaten injects badly needed democratisation into EU decision-making: henceforth voters will know that their vote in European Parliament elections will decide the commission presidency. Moreover, even if the Spitzenkandidat system is not expressly provided for in the treaties, it is isn't prohibited by them. (The treaties merely vaguely require the nomination process to "[take] into account the elections to the European Parliament".)

Power grab

But does having

Spitzenkandidaten

amount to a power grab by the European Parliament? It certainly shifts some decision-making power in their direction. (Last week, the parliament’s Socialists agreed to support Juncker as commission president – but only on condition they obtained the European Parliament presidency for Socialist

Martin Schulz

as a consolation prize.)

Perhaps the biggest objection to the Spitzenkandidat system is that it upsets the EU's institutional balance. The commission is supposedly independent. Yet increasingly it is being subjugated to a majoritarian European Parliament. Ironically, member states themselves pushed this process along by agreeing in 2007 to the election of the commission president by the parliament. They subsequently let Spitzenkandidaten be chosen by political parties without objection.

Last week, however, they seemingly developed cold feet, sombrely agreeing to “consider” the Spitzenkandidat system for future elections. Whether Spitzenkandidaten are here to stay is thus not entirely clear.

The EU needs to be more responsive democratically, particularly given its increased powers of intervention, for example in national budgets. But serious thinking is required on how exactly this should be achieved.

Professor Gavin Barrett teaches constitutional law of the EU in the Sutherland School of Law, UCD