Brussels: European Union officials say leaders pulled an all-nighter at a summit but failed to agree on the list of candidates for the bloc’s key posts, with the marathon talks entering a second day.
The leaders trickled in for bilateral contacts through Sunday before officially convening at around 8 pm Sunday. They have been locked in talks ever since amid deep divisions over how to best balance political, geographic and gender considerations among the 28 member nations.
With the selection process bogged down for the second EU summit meeting in a row, the leaders were still considering Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans to replace Christian Democrat Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the EU’s powerful executive arm, the European Commission.
“Let’s see,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, said of Timmermans’ chances when briefly descending from the meeting room in EU headquarters around breakfast time.
The Timmermans option deeply divided the European People’s Party-Christian Democrat group as it would surrender the key post to the rival Socialists & Democrats bloc despite EPP remaining the biggest group in the EU following last month’s election.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, an EPP stalwart, posted a video on his verified Facebook account of a discussion with Timmermans in which Borissov said the Dutchman should get the Commission job while the less coveted parliament presidency should go to EPP candidate Manfred Weber.
But Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar insisted that the “vast majority of the EPP prime ministers don’t believe we should give up the presidency of the Commission quite so easily, without a fight.”
After negotiations started early Sunday, summit host and EU Council President Donald Tusk had more than 30 bilateral meetings in his attempt to find a breakthrough.
The task was never going to be easy. The appointments must take into account political affiliation, geography — balancing east and west, north and south — population size and gender. The leaders of EU institutions are supposed to impartially represent the interests of all member nations globally and in Brussels.
Some leaders discussed the roster of upcoming vacancies, which also include the EU’s top diplomat, the president of the European Parliament and the chief of the European Central Bank, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan that concluded Saturday.
Tusk wants nominations to be wrapped up soon, seeking to prevent further erosion of public confidence in the EU amid Brexit uncertainty and intra-bloc divisions over managing migration.
There was hope at the previous summit on June 20-21 that more time would clarify who should replace Juncker. German Chancellor Angela Merkel backs Weber, the German conservative whose centre-right European People’s Party is the largest political group in the European Parliament but lost seats in the EU elections in May.
