Why EU leaders were forced to delay the bloc’s top job deal

European Union member state leaders were not able to seal a preliminary deal for a trio of top job positions for the next five years when they met on Monday (17 June), despite earlier hopes of a swift agreement.

Monday’s informal dinner was expected to result in a ‘political agreement’ to renominate incumbent European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for a second term and appoint Portugal’s António Costa as European Council president, and Estonia’s Kaja Kallas as foreign policy chief.

However, they failed to agree and requested more time to negotiate.

“It was a good conversation, it goes in the right direction, but there is no agreement tonight at this stage,” European Council President Charles Michel told reporters after the dinner and talks between EU leaders.

“We need to agree on a team, and we need to agree on a programme,” Michel said. “The political parties (…) made proposals, and we will have the occasion in the days to come to work further and to prepare the decisions that we need to make”.

While he did not elaborate on the proposals, people familiar with the discussions said that while there was no attempt to block specific appointments or names, several EU leaders had asked the candidates to present more detailed plans of what they would do in their potential roles.

”Our collective duty is to decide at the end of June,” Michel stressed.

EU leaders will now reconvene in Brussels on June 27-28, hoping to reach an agreement before the European Parliament votes on the next Commission president in mid-July. 

French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Michel’s assessment of the talks, saying he expected a deal next week. “Things need to simmer a little, but we are not far off.”

“I have a good reason to believe that next week, the official EU summit will be able to take decisions on the names that were put forward for these key posts,” Finish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said.

Meanwhile, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, “We will not have a re-run of 2019 when it was a big tombola, and everything was up for grabs for three days,” adding: “That’s not the case here – it seems to be much more clear [this time].”

So what went wrong at the dinner table?

According to several EU diplomats, the problem was not the second mandate for von der Leyen or the other top job candidates as negotiators for the three main political groups in the EU – the EPP, Socialists and the Liberals – had agreed on them before heading into the main part of the summit.

Furthermore, leaders of Croatia, Finland and the Netherlands indicated that the discussion around the trio was all but settled.

“It was more a question of, what does the overall package consist of? How can confidence be built up so that Parliament also accepts the solution?” Orpo told reporters.

With 13 of the 27 EU leaders belonging to the centre-right EPP, they were not satisfied with just support for von der Leyen and wanted to see their good election results translated into a larger share of power and positions.

“We thought it was a done deal, but the EPP decided otherwise,” one EU diplomat said.

This means that they want to consider nominating an EPP leader for the second half of the five-year term of the European Council post.

According to the EU treaties, the European Council president is elected for a two-and-a-half-year term, renewable once. 

So far, there has always been an informal agreement between parties and leaders that the incumbent’s mandate will be renewed for another term without much debate, as it had been done for Michel. 

However, two EU diplomats told Euractiv that the EPP wants to ensure that it will not have to re-elect the Socialist pick for the second mandate.

The Socialists, meanwhile, argued that there was no reason not to follow tradition and procedure.

“It is now more a question of the balance of power between EPP and S&D that prevented a deal from being announced tonight,” a second EU diplomat said.

In addition, some EU leaders, especially from the EPP, had voiced concerns over an ongoing corruption probe into Costa’s former government officials. 

While the proceedings had caused him to resign last November, no one has been formally charged with a crime but after the summit, EPP sources said that Costa still has some convincing to do.

In the evening, other high-level positions were attempted to be mixed into the discussion, such as the next appointment of the European Central Bank (ECB) chief post-2027 after right-wing Christine Lagarde as well as the NATO Secretary-General post, which is likely to go to the outgoing Liberal Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, people familiar with the discussions suggested.

Far right out of the picture? 

Despite the far-right and the right-wing conservative’s gains in the EU elections, they are not officially considered in the top-job discussion. 

“The will of the European people was ignored today in Brussels – the result of the European election is clear: right-wing parties got stronger, the Left and the liberals lost ground,” Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after the summit.

Although Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her ECR party were seen as von der Leyen’s potential deal-maker before the elections, that is no longer the case. 

“It is quite clear that the support in the European Parliament for the next Commission president cannot be based on right-wing and right-wing populist parties,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters before the talks. 

Scholz’s warning was echoed by a third EU diplomat speaking to Euractiv, who insisted that the hard-right or populist parties are not part of the negotiations. 

EU diplomats stressed that it could be achieved by counting on the ‘centrist majority’ of EPP, Socialists and Liberals and without the right-wing parties further to the right than EPP.

This take is however challenged by Conservative leaders such as Meloni, according to Euractiv’s information.

[Edited by René Moerland/ Alice Taylor]

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