Daily Times

The year, 2019 remains crucial for European Union affairs. The heads of souther European states, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta gathered in Malta on June 14 in Valletta to have a united front on key economic and political issues before next week’s European Council meeting. On June 20-21, the EU Council meeting is going to be held in Brussels in order to review the new trends being reflected in the aftermath of the recently held elections in EU Parliament. The EU’s 28 national leaders seem to have been haggling and horse-trading over who will succeed Jean Claud-Juncker as head of the European Commission, the EU’s powerful executive.

The EU powerbrokers France and Germany are at loggerheads over the role, although leaders insisted they would hold firm on making policy priorities for the next five years, rather than personalities. A rift between France and Germany was apparent at an informal summit of EU leaders in Brussels, as French President Emmanuel Macron looked certain to protest the replacement of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker with German politician Manfred Weber, who has never served in government or an institution as big as the commission. The Brussels-based centre right politicians now see a clear path to holding on to power – thereby turning the fight over the EU’s top jobs into a two-person contest: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

On May 26, the European People’s Party led by Manfred Weber won the most seats in the European Parliament, making Weber the lead candidate to become the next president of the European Commission. The centre-left and centre-right parties suffered significant losses as environmentalist, pro-EU centrist liberal, Eurosceptic and right-wing populist parties made substantial gains. An election to the European Parliament was held from May 23 to May 26, the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. But the result of the 2019 EP election seems to have produced the effect regarding the selection of the president of the European Commission by following the Spitzenkandidat procedure.

As far as the blunt policy challenges before Brussels are concerned, the most pertinent among them are UK’s pending “Brexit” ; democracy and rule-of-law concerns in Poland, Hungary, and other EU members; migration and related societal integration concerns; and a heightened terrorist threat

In Germany, the poll remained the first electoral test for Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the woman who replaced Angela Merkel as CDU leader last December and is widely expected to replace her as chancellor when her fourth and final term ends in 2021. But her standing in the CDU could be regarded as a big blow if the party garners substantially less than the 30 per cent it won in 2014. Germany’s left-of-centre Social Democrats have also come under duress, as expected, their share of the vote has dropped far below the 27 per cent they garnered in 2014. The SPD seems to be quitting its grand coalition with Merkel’s CDU, which many activists blame for the party’s misfortunes.

Both Merkel and Macron want to reduce the power of EU commissioners. While Macron seems to advocate to halve the number of commissioners, Merkel probably favours fewer than before. Merkel thinks that Germany and France could be paying a certain price for this. Merkel has suggested introducing a rota system so that all member states may designate commissioners.

The two prominent European leaders – Merkel and Macron disagree over how the president of the EU’s executive body should be selected. Merkel favours a Europe-wide list of candidates who compete against one another. That would make the president’s nomination independent of EU member states’ governments, Macron, however, is sceptical of this suggestion tabled by German Chancellor.

France is pushing Michel Barnier to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the commission, capitalizing on the respect that the bloc’s chief Brexit negotiator commands across the continent. President Emmanuel Macron has signalled he would also accept Dutchman Frans Timmermans, or Danish EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager but pointedly didn’t mention Weber. Merkel is a veteran of such rounds of haggling and has been the front and centre of all major political battles since coming to power in 2005 – and indeed won most of them. The fight for who will clinch the EU’s top jobs has just begun and Weber could be a pawn to be sacrificed in the long game if, for example, Germany has its heart set on getting the ECB job for the first time. Though Angela Merkel has repeatedly declared her intention to leave politics at the end of her term as German chancellor, she has not been hesitant to talk about her desire to accept the top job at the Commission. In this regard, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he would encourage the role of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the new president of the European Commission.

As far as blunt policy challenges before Brussels are concerned, the most pertinent among them are UK’s pending Brexit; democracy and rule-of-law concerns in Poland, Hungary, and other EU members; migration and related societal integration concerns; and a heightened terrorist threat. As for the CFSP, there appears to be a consensus in Brussels that in a changing security environment, a military approach alone is not sufficient to guarantee safety and stability of the EU. That is why the European approach to security and defence needs is to be much broader. As the Union way to security builds on Europe’s revisiting approach nurtured as a mixture of soft and hard power paradigms, on the coherent use of these different instruments – the so-called integrated approach accompanied with cooperation.

Furthermore, in 2019, the four largest governments of the Eurozone economies – Germany, France, Italy and Spain – seem to have been facing a raft of political troubles that will ultimately limit their room to maneuver at home, as well as their ability to offer cohesive leadership in the bloc as a whole-thereby hibernating the EU’s dream of a closer Union . Given the new trends matrix, it appears that Brussels will encounter the rise of nationalism in its member states while having trade disputes with the United States. The European Union will have its hands full with the other two key powers in the international system – China and Russia.

The trade war between Beijing and Washington has created an opportunity for the European Union, since Brussels could increase pressure on Beijing to open its market to European investment. The EU wants China to grant European investors an equal footing with its domestic companies and remove subsidies for Chinese businesses. In the meanwhile, the dictatorship in Belarus, but unfortunately also recent political developments in countries like Poland or Hungary, where the founding principles of democratic States are gradually eroded, show that democracy and rule of law in Europe are not a given, but need to be cared for by its citizens.

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan