To look beyond the rather simplistic dichotomy of the lead candidate procedure’s success and failure, this CEPS Explainer analyses the procedure’s past performance, outlines the impact that it has had in 2014 and 2019 and teases out some general conditions that would need to be met for the procedure to be more successful in 2029.
It concludes that, while it (thus far) has had little impact on the ‘Europeanness’ of the EP elections, the procedure has made leadership selection more transparent, enhanced the Commission President’s public stature and has empowered them, also vis-à-vis the European Council. The procedure has further highlighted the central role that political parties play, both at European and national level. Overall, the lead candidate procedure did alter how the Commission President is appointed well beyond a pure intergovernmental model. Yet the growing trends towards the ‘presidentialisation’ of the European Commission is at odds with the unique characteristics of the EU’s political system more generally. (Lacking) intra-party competition and multilingualism are also highlighted as key challenges to a successful lead candidate procedure, alongside the importance of coalitions and inter-institutional coherence.
This CEPS Explainer then goes into more details on the general conditions that would need to be met to ensure a more effective and more respected lead candidate procedure from 2029 onwards. These include making the candidate selection process more transparent and inclusive; designing the election campaigns to be more pan-European; securing public backing from EU leaders; more attention paid to the elections by both national media and national parties; and finally, the need to consider pre-electoral coalition pacts.
