Picking our Spitzenkandidat

Planning for the 2019 Europen Elections was a central part of this month’s PES Conference in Lisbon. Of particular importance were the discussions on choosing the joint

candidate for President of the European Commission (the Spitzenkandidat") and the debate on how the UK seats in the parliament are divvied up, post Brexit.

The legal basis for the Spitzenkandidat was put brought about by an amendment to the Treaty on European Union by the Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force on 1 December 2009. The amendment added the wording "taking into account the elections to the European Parliament", so that Article 17.7 now included the wording:

"Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission."

In advance of the 2014 elections each of the main European groupings put forward its chosen candidate for Commission President. The three main candidates were Martin Schultz for the PES, Guy Verhofstad for ALDI (the liberal grouping) and Jean-Claude Juncker for the European People's Party (to which Fine Gael belong).

The EPP won more seats than others in 2014 and so Junkers name went forward from the Parliament for approval by the European Council, made up of Prime Ministers of the Member States.

In advance of the 2019 elections the PES is now starting the process of choosing our candidate. A working group has been set up to advise on the process. It will be chaired by Ruairi Quinn. Each Member State has one representative on the group and I have been asked to be the Irish representative. 

Over the next year we will be meeting regularly to decide on the process for our candidate selection. It should be an interesting time. With names such as Frans Timmermans and Frederica Mogherini being mentioned as potential candidates we are sure to have a strong person at the helm of our pan-European campaign.

Whomever we chose as our candidate will have the responsibility of leading our campaign in the elections. They will be the front person, explaining our manifesto, supporting our candidates. Our strategy will be "a common candidate, a common campaign" with the PES focused on providing the voters of Europe with a core message of what we will do as a party if we are returned in sufficient numbers to the Parliament.

The second main discussion was in relation to numbers. Currently there are 750 MEPs. Once the UK leaves their 73 MEPs will no longer sit in the Parliament. What do we do with these seats? Firstly, we could do nothing, remove the seats and reduce the overall numbers of MEPs by 73. Secondly, we could use the seats for a new transnational list, whereby voters choose which party to support and each party places the names of its preferred candidates in order of priority on the list. The higher the votes each party gets, the more names elected from the party’s list. Thirdly we could distribute the UK seats across the other remaining Member States. Fourthly, we could adopt a mixture of the above measures.


At the Convention last week the options were debated and the PES voted to support the second option, of creating a transnational list. As the voting delegate from Ireland I voted against the proposal. I worry that a transnational list will favour larger countries. At the moment, under the Lisbon Treaty, the maximum number of seats that any one country can have is 96. Germany, for instance, is capped at this number. If we adopt a list we could find that it is comprised largely of candidates from larger member states. Ireland might be lucky to get one seat from the list system.

The European Parliament considered this issue two months ago and the relevant committee has recommend option three, a redistribution of the seats between Member States. They recommend that Ireland gets an increase of two MEPs from 11 to 13. Their proposal would respect the current cap of 96 seats per country. If this approach is chosen then the subsequent boundary commission analysis in Ireland would likely result in a return to the 2009 boundaries of Dublin (4), Leinster (3), Munster (3) and Connaught / Ulster (3).

The redistribution proposal will be debated across Parliament and in the Council over the coming months. A decision will need to be taken early in the New Year, to provide sufficient time for Member States to enact domestic legislation to reflect the changes in advance of the elections.

The decision will also impact on the timing of our selection processes. There would be little point in selecting candidates until we know the exact nature of the constituencies and the number of seats to be contested.

At the 2014 European Elections the Labour Party won three seats. Last time around we won none. With a strong choice of Spitzenkandidat , a clear manifesto and a good campaign, there is every chance that well-chosen domestic candidates can win seats for our Party in the European Parliament elections of 2019.

First published in Left Field Ezine, December 2017