In rejecting spitzenkandidaten, Macron has let the perfect be the enemy of the good

National leaders, led by Emmanuel Macron, have refused a European Parliament demand that citizens should select the next EU president. The reasons have more to do with institutional rivalries than citizens’ interests.

“Don’t count your spitzens before they hatch,” tweeted Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė ominously as she entered Friday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels. 

The Lithuanian president was referring to the so-called ‘spitzenkandidaten’ process, used in the last European Parliament elections in 2014 for the first time to select the European Commission President as a result of the public vote. National leaders of the 27 future EU member states (that is, all except the UK) were meeting Friday to decide whether to use the process again in next year’s election.

Angela's bad night - a German election special

Today's German election has dealt a blow to the country's mainstream parties, with a dismal performance by the centre-left SPD and a hit for Angela Merkel's CDU. Meanwhile, the new populist far-right Alternative for Germany is set to become the country's third largest party. Tyson Barker and I give you the latest from Berlin, live as the result come in.

One speed or two? Juncker challenges Macron's EU vision

In this week's podcast, we dissect President Juncker's State of the European Union speech and talk to journalist Soeren Kittel about next week's German election.

 

Who will be Merkel's dance partner?

Germany’s upcoming election is eliciting a collective yawn in Europe, with a Merkel win almost certain. But surprises may be in store in who voters choose to be with her in government.

Compared to some of its neighbors, Germany isn’t known for having elections with edge-of-your-seat excitement. Particularly in the past decade, as Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc has dominated politics, federal elections haven’t had much in the way of surprises.

But this year was supposed to be different. People expected a real contest between two credible candidates on September 24. That didn’t pan out.

Merkel has now been in power for twelve years, and she is running for a historic fourth term that could make her, along with Helmut Kohl, the longest-serving chancellor in modern German history. But many of her decisions have proved unpopular, particularly her controversial move to welcome Syrian refugees fleeing that country’s civil war in August 2015. It was thought that voters were ready for change.

Will Germans really deliver Merkel a historic fourth term?

On this week's Brussels2Berlin podcast, Tyson Barker and Dave Keating talk to Deutsche Welle reporter Sumi Somaskanda about the upcoming German election.

On the way in, and on the way out?

On this week's Brussels2Berlin podcast, we talk Turkey, and Brexit. It was a bad week for EU relations with both.

 

Germany’s late but welcome turn on gay marriage

Merkel’s decision to allow same sex marriage is a calculated political move ahead of the election. 

For several years, Germany has seemed like a strange anomaly in Western Europe on one of the key cultural issues of the modern era. 

As country after country passed gay marriage in Europe and the Americas, Germany held out. 

On the gay marriage map of Europe, a wave of dark blue came rushing in from the West. Starting with The Netherlands and Belgium in 2001, countries adopted full gay marriage. 

The most surprising development came in 2015, when the Irish voted in a referendum to allow gay marriage - the first country to do so by public vote. Long known as a conservative country dominated by the Catholic church, it was a chance for the country to demonstrate just how much it has changed over the past three decades. 

But meanwhile in central Europe, everything remained frozen.

Who is Germany’s anti-Trump?

The US President heaped further scorn upon Germans during last week’s NATO summit. In a German election year, he will become the perfect foil.

Even before last week’s NATO and G7 summits in Europe, Angela Merkel knew that Donald Trump would not have kind words for the Germans.

Having already suffered the indignity of having him refuse to shake her hand during her state visit to Washington - possibly as revenge for her frosty response to his election - Merkel could have expected that Trump’s obsession with the German trade surplus and lack of military spending would again bring hostility during their second meeting. It did.

After trauma of Lisbon, Macron faces uphill battle for EU treaty change

The new French president may have softened Merkel's resistance to change, but leaders across Europe will be wary of opening a pandora's box.

Emmanuel Macron made his first foreign visit as French president yesterday, coming here to Berlin for a meeting with Angela Merkel.

That Berlin was his first destination is no surprise. The Franco-German relationship is the most important for Paris, and also the most important relationship in the European Union as a whole. But there was an added importance to this first visit. During his campaign Macron made promises about a process of renewal and reform of the EU. None of that will be possible without the cooperation of Germany's chancellor.

We still do not know if Merkel, a conservative, will be that chancellor. Germany is having a general election in September and she may be unseated by her center-left challenger Martin Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament.

Today the dark clouds over Europe parted. Let's fix the roof while the sun is shining.

President Macron represents an opportunity for Europe to save itself. Will it be squandered like so many opportunities before?

When Emmanuel Macron took to the stage tonight for his enormous victory rally outside the Louvre in Paris, he did so with Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' playing in the background. It was a truly shocking moment, because it is a tune that Europe's national leaders have been running away from for 12 years.

The Ode to Joy is the EU's unofficial anthem - unofficial because its official status was removed from the proposed European constitution after French voters rejected it in 2005. It is still played before sessions of the European Parliament nonetheless. But for national leaders, Beethoven's rousing melody has represented nothing but a headache.

For France's new president, it represents an opportunity.

The enthusiastically pro-EU centrist candidate Macron has handily defeated far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen - a woman who had promised to dismantle the EU. Brussels, and national capitals across Europe, are tonight breathing a sigh of relief.