Candidates for Commission presidency to clash in televised debate in Maastricht

Voters will have their first chance to hear the lead candidates of the main political parties in a policy debate on Monday.

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With less than four weeks to go until the elections to the European Parliament, voters will have their first chance to hear the lead candidates of the main political parties in a policy debate in the Dutch city of Maastricht on Monday (28 April). The debate will feature the two front-runners to replace José Manuel Barroso as president of the European Commission, centre-right Jean-Claude Juncker and centre-left Martin Schulz, as well as liberal Guy Verhofstadt and Ska Keller of the Greens. The event will be broadcast live by Euronews, a pan- European channel subsidised by the European Union.

Juncker and Schulz met for a live debate on 9 April, but Monday’s debate is the first in which Verhofstadt and Keller – a German who shares the Greens’ top slot with José Bové of France – will also participate. Polls suggest that the centre-right European People’s Party and the socialists are running neck and neck, far ahead of any of the other groups (see right).

Alexis Tsipras, the candidate from the European United Left, has declined an invitation to participate, according to Maastricht University, one of the co-hosts of the debate. Tsipras is, however, expected to participate in a debate organised by the European Broadcasting Union in Brussels on 15 May, one week before the start of the elections.

The far-left, known by its French acronym, GUE, is projected to win some 20 seats in the next European Parliament, in addition to the 35 it held in 2009-14, putting it ahead of the Greens, currently the fourth-largest group in the Parliament.

Tsipras has been a strong campaigner whose success, if it does materialise, could undermine the Greek government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, which is a grand coalition of centre-right and centre-left. The latest national polls in Greece suggest that Tsipras’s anti-capitalist, anti-austerity Syriza could win six seats in the European Parliament, one more than predicted for Samaras’s New Democracy party. A GUE spokesperson said that Tsipras was focusing his campaign on Greece.

Focus on youth

The debate at Maastricht’s Theater aan het Vrijthof will focus on education, employment and youth engagement – issues supposed to be relevant to young voters, who are expected to make up the bulk of the 700-strong audience. (Another co-host of the debate is the European Youth Forum.)

Most of the seats are reserved for students at the university, and a university spokesperson said that places had been filled within hours after registration opened.

The broadcast of the 90-minute debate, to be held in English, will have interpretation into a dozen languages, and will be moderated by two Euronews journalists. The live audience will be able to ask pre-selected questions, and questions can also be submitted via Twitter during the debate.

Pre-selection was carried out by Maastricht University, which encouraged students across Europe to send in their questions.