Planning the Parliament’s next president

A bit of forward thinking about the presidency could help the Parliament avoid making the mistakes of the past

The main political parties in the European Union are preparing to do battle over who should become the next president of the European Commission. Each is selecting a candidate to feature in the European Parliament elections – in the hope that a choice might make citizens more inclined to turn out and vote. The Party of European Socialists has already chosen Martin Schulz, the president of the Parliament – a choice made easier by his being the only nomination. The liberals are currently inviting nominations, and Guy Verhofstadt and Olli Rehn have declared their willingness to stand. The centre-right European People’s Party will stretch out its selection process until March.

What citizens will not be invited to vote on is who should succeed Schulz as the next president of the Parliament. That choice will be made in June at the first meeting of the newly-elected Parliament. To become president of the Parliament, an MEP has to win the votes of an absolute majority ie, a majority of the entire electorate of 751 MEPs. If no candidate has an absolute majority after three rounds of voting, the candidate who secures a simple majority of those voting wins.

The presidency of the Parliament is much less talked about at present than the presidency of the Commission or, for that matter, the presidency of the European Council (Herman Van Rompuy’s mandate expires at the end of 2014) and there are good reasons why that should be so. The first is that it is a less important job – less power, less visibility. The second is that the electorate is small and will not be formed until the results of the elections are known in May.

And yet, a bit of forward thinking about the presidency of the Parliament might help MEPs to avoid some of the mistakes of the past.

Since 1979, when direct elections to the Parliament began, the presidency has, for the most part, been decided by an unholy alliance between the two biggest political groups in the Parliament, the centre-right and the centre-left, with each taking a turn at the presidency during a five-year parliamentary term. Simone Veil, a French liberal, was the first president of the directly-elected Parliament (1979-81) chosen before the alliance was established. In 2002-04, Pat Cox, another liberal, became president when the centre-right switched its affections. But with both the German liberals and the British liberals sagging badly in the opinion polls, it seems unlikely that the liberal group will have the numbers in the next parliament to secure a turn at the presidency.

This time round, a lot will depend on how many seats Eurosceptic parties win in May’s elections and whether the centre-left (now the Socialists and Democrats, previously the Party of European Socialists) and centre-right (the European People’s Party) together can command a majority. If they fall short, then the established customs will be strained.

That would be no bad thing. The cosy arrangements between the PES and the EPP threw up results that were damaging for the Parliament. Most egregiously, in July 2004 Josep Borrell was elected to the presidency of a Parliament that he had joined only a few weeks earlier. Although a figure of some standing in Spanish politics, he did not know the MEPs over whom he was supposed to preside, nor the institution and its workings.

The situation arose because the EPP wanted to take the second half of the five-year parliamentary term, the PES was supposed to provide the president in the first half, and the Spanish delegation was powerful within the PES group. The result – the choice of Borrell – was explicable, but not forgivable. By contrast, it took another five years before the presidency went to an MEP from one of the countries that had joined the EU in 2004 (Jerzy Buzek, from Poland).

Earlier in this parliament, it seemed that the S&D and EPP were intent on pursuing their old ways. Word is that they had agreed that the presidency should be shared out between the Italian socialist Gianni Pittella, and Joseph Daul, who until recently was leader of the EPP MEPs. However, Daul has since stood down from the group leadership and announced that he will not seek re-election to the Parliament, preferring to concentrate on the presidency of the EPP’s Europe-wide organisation, which he took over from Wilfried Martens.

The rumour mill now speculates as to whether two European commissioners who might seek election to the Parliament, Viviane Reding and Michel Barnier, might seek the presidency. Both are ex-MEPs from the centre-right.

What such speculation underlines is how easily the presidency of the Parliament can become an adjunct to horse-trading over those other EU jobs – the presidencies of the European Commission and European Council, the high representative for foreign and security policy. In effect, that would mean the Parliament’s presidency was being decided by the European Council.

This is possible because of the control exerted by the EPP and S&D group on the choice of president, at least up to now. They are the means by which national leaders control what happens in the Parliament, almost regardless of rank-and-file MEPs.

Perhaps that is why the Parliament needs to break the mould. One part of the president’s role is to represent the institution to the outside world (a role that nowadays probably requires greater mastery of the English language than Pittella has). But arguably just as important is the president’s role as internal arbiter. A president who owes his or her existence to two political groups will be at their mercy. (After the cash-for-questions scandal of 2010-11, Buzek had his attempts at reform watered down by the groups.) The Parliament should have a president who is more than an instrument of the EPP and S&D. That may yet happen, despite the groups. If May’s elections return a more polarised assembly, the president will have to command wide support, and EPP and S&D backing may not be enough.

Ahead of those elections, voters should consider not just the presidency of the Commission, but also the presidency of the Parliament itself. What the parties say about the presidency tells us something about how they perceive the Parliament.

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