SPD drops demand for Commission job

Germany’s SPD would accept a centre-right German commissioner if Martin Schulz is elected president of the European Parliament.

Germany’s Social Democrats, junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government, have dropped demands that Martin Schulz, the centre-left’s candidate for president of the European Commission, be appointed a vice-president of the Commission.

Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD leader, told the website of Der Spiegel, a newsweekly: “The SPD will accept a commissioner from the [Christian Democratic] Union – on condition that Martin Schulz is elected president of the European Parliament.”

Gabriel said that Schulz’s election and that of the centre-right Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the Commission “should be linked”. He said that it was now Merkel’s job to convince the centre-right European People’s Party to back the deal.

Juncker is expected to be nominated by the national leaders of the Union’s member states at a European Council next week (26-27 June) and confirmed by the Parliament on 15 July. The Parliament meets for the first time in its new composition in Strasbourg on 1 July, and electing its president is the main item on the agenda.

Schulz was president of the Parliament until Wednesday (18 June), when he resigned. He preferred to become leader of the centre-left MEPs so that he could participate in consultations with Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, about the Commission appointment. After his resignation, Schulz said his “ambition” was to become a Commission vice-president under Juncker as president.