Who will be the next President?

In Malta all three established parties have endorsed the candidate chosen by their respective European political group, with Labour supporting Martin Schulz, the PN supporting Jean Claude Juncker and AD supporting the joint candidature of Ska Keller and Jose Bove.

Schulz is not a new name in the local political scene. His endorsement of Joseph Muscat’s candidature for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2008 had raised the ire of the other four contestants but cemented the ties between the local Labour party and its European counterparts.

Despite their reservations on key aspects of the Socialist manifesto, including references to tax harmonisation and a tax on financial transactions, Labour is supporting the candidature of Martin Schulz, who was considered as too much of a Europeanist by British labour which is not backing his candidature.

Labour leader Joseph Muscat claims Schultz, with whom he has worked closely in the European Parliament during his term as MEP, “understands Maltese realities”. 

Yet while Jean Claude Juncker visited Malta in his campaign trail on Friday, Schulz has so far not scheduled any such visit. As a former long serving Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Juncker is also deemed to be familiar with the problems faced by small nation states.

Green candidate Jose Bove is familiar with Malta. As an MEP he had a prominent role in probing the actions of the Commission with regards to Maltese commissioner John Dalli with whom he had previously clashed over GMOs. Bove had accused the EC of collusion with big tobacco in a bid to derail the tobacco directive proposed by Dalli.

Liberal candidate Guy Verhofstadt is not backed by any major grouping in Malta, but was a foremost critic of the Individual Investor Programme. His categorical reaction was: “I think it’s completely crazy, I don’t even understand how it can come into the mind of somebody.”

Absent from the local menu is the charismatic Greek Alexis Tsirpas, under whose leadership the European left is expected to become the third political force in the European parliament. While these elections are expected to see an upsurge of far right parties and euro sceptic parties, no single candidate has emerged to represent the eurosceptic cause.

The EC presidential debate

On 15 May Eurovision will screen a 90-minute live televised debate between candidates to be the next President of the European Commission.  The first debate of this sort hosted by Euronews t took place took place on Monday.

The Eurovision debate will take place in front of a live studio audience in the European Parliament plenary chamber, in Brussels, under a strict set of rules and chaired by veteran Italian journalist, war correspondent, TV anchor, author, filmmaker and broadcasting executive, Monica Maggioni.

The next EC President

The Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, provides that the European Parliament shall elect the president of the European Commission on the basis of a proposal made by the European Council, taking into account the European elections This provision will apply for the first time for the 2014 elections.

Nevertheless, major EU politicians such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel have questioned the aspiration of European political parties to link the presidency of the European Commission with the result of the European elections and insist that the future Commission president has to suit member states’ expectations first.

Though the all powerful German Chancellor supported Juncker for the EPP nomination, some suspect that Angela Merkel sees him as a stalking horse to hold the EPP candidacy for now, but will support someone else when it comes time for member state leaders to put forward a nominee in June.

European People's Party • Jean-Claude Juncker

59-year-old Jean-Claude Juncker was Prime Minister of Luxembourg between 1995 and 2013 and is considered to be politically centrist and a believer in stronger European unity. By the time he left office, he was already the longest-serving head of government of any European Union state. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Christian Social People’s Party in 1984, Juncker was immediately promoted to Jacques Santer’s cabinet as Minister for Work. He was Luxembourg’s Minister for Finances from 1989 to 2009, and became Prime Minister when Santer became President of the European Commission in 1995. In his capacity of Prime Minister, he also served two six-month terms as President of the European Council, in 1997 and 2005.

In July 2013, Juncker’s coalition government was brought down by a scandal involving the country’s intelligence agency.

Juncker was chosen as the EPP candidate at the conclusion of a two-day European People’s Party convention in Dublin, where he defeated Michel Barnier of France. Juncker received 382 votes to 245 for Barnier, the commission’s internal markets minister.

As Prime Minister of Luxemburg Juncker was opposed to the introduction of a Financial Transaction Tax.

Explaining his position to Der Spiegel in 2013 he declared that he was in principle a supporter of this tax.

“I was even in favor of only introducing this tax in the euro zone if we failed to convince the remaining EU members. But then a number of euro countries also rejected it, including Ireland, the Netherlands and a few others. It would put Luxembourg at a competitive disadvantage if we nevertheless accepted this tax”.

Juncker inherits the mantle of Jose Manuel Barroso, the EPP’s nominee for the European commission who pursued a policy of austerity.

Socialists & Democrats • Martin Schulz

The colourful Martin Shultz was not destined to become a full time politics.

After high school he decided to try to make a living out of his passion for and eventually opened his own bookstore in Würselen, which he successfully ran for 12 years.

Aged 31, he was elected as the youngest mayor of North Rhine-Westphalia, a post he held for 11 years. Since 1994, Martin Schulz was a Member of the European Parliament and in 2004 was elected leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament.

In 2003 he was the target of a verbal assault by former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi who said that he could imagine the politician playing a Nazi concentration camp guard in a film. Only last week Berlusconi reignited this controversy by lashing again at Schulz.

Berlusconi was reacting to Schulz reference to “the virus of conflict of interests” in politics, a barely veiled swipe at billionaire tycoon turned politician Berlusconi. “I didn’t want to insult him,” Berlusconi said at the weekend, in a reference to his 2003 attack on Schulz. “But for God’s sake, for the Germans the concentration camps never existed,” the Italian news agency, ANSA quoted him as saying. 

Following this outburst Berlusconi was disowned by EPP presidential candidate Jean Claude Juncker.

In March delegates at a congress of the Party of European Socialists in Rome voted 368 in favour of Schulz’s candidacy, with two ballots against and 34 abstentions.  The British Labour party refused to back his candidacy because it views him as an advocate of ever-closer union – anathema for British voters.

In his acceptance speech Scultz promised tougher action against tax evasion, stricter regulation of the markets – including a financial transaction tax and caps on bankers’ bonuses – a European system of minimum wages, a “Bill of Digital Rights” to safeguard online privacy, an innovation-based “smart and sustainable reindustrialization policy,” and socially- and environmentally-conscious international trade deals.

European Green Party • Ska Keller/José Bové

The Greens were the only party to elect their candidates through an on-line primary in which everyone could vote.  Alternattiva Demokratika supported both Bove and Ska Keller during the primary in which more than 23,000 voters across Europe participated.

The 61-year-old Bove is a French farmer and fierce critic of capitalist globalisation. In 2002, Bové was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for his role in the destruction of a McDonald’s franchise in Millau. Bove had joined activists in dismantling the half-built McDonald’s restaurant; loading doors, walls and roof tiles into tractor carts and dumping them in front of the town hall in protest at US trade restrictions.

In 2003 Bové began serving a sentence of ten months for the destruction of transgenic crops. President Jacques Chirac intervened in the case reducing the sentence to seven months.

In his bid for the French Presidency where he got half a million votes and the endorsement of  internationally renowned actress Juliette Binoche. In June 2009, he was elected to the European Parliament, as a candidate of Europe Ecologie, which garnered over 16% of the vote.

In his acceptance speech Bove promised that he will defend Europe that protects from the globalisation that is destroying jobs and the environment.

“More than ever, for me Europe in 2014 represents a subversive and pragmatic dream to leave nationalism and selfishness behind. We need more Europe. We need more of a better Europe.”

Born in East Germany, the 33-year-old Ska Keller studied Islamic studies, Turkish and Jewish Studies at Free University of Berlin and specializes in migration issues. In her acceptance speech she promised to put youth unemployment on top of her agenda and protect the rights of refugees and migrants.

European Left • Alexis Tsipras

In a media coup, the European left, which includes communist and Nordic eco-socialist parties, has nominated Greek Syriza Alexis Tsiripas as its candidate.

Tsiripas represents the struggle against the politics of austerity, which left its most devastating effects on Greece, which had to bear the brunt of spending cuts imposed by the EU/IMF troika.

Tsiripas is a supporter of European unity but advocated a different social Europe, which supports public investments. He hails from the Euro communist Syriza, which split from the orthodox Communist Party to become the leading force on the Greek left after the collapse of the Socialist Party.

Tsipras led SYRIZA through the 2012 elections, overseeing a swing of over 22% to the party, and becoming the Leader of the Opposition. In his country he is admired for travelling by motorbike rather than the limos favoured by other Greek political leaders, and preferring an open-necked shirts to a suit and tie. He shocked the establishment when he attended an official ceremony commemorating the end of the military junta escorted by a young African immigrant.

Alliance for Liberals and Democrats • Guy Verhofstadt

The head of Europe’s Liberals, Guy Verhofstadt a former Belgian Prime Minister’s is the most federalist option on the menu. “Europe, and more of it, is the one sure way out of the financial crisis,m” he said in his acceptance speech.

At the onset of his political career in Belgium his young age and economic views earned him the “Baby Thatcher” nickname but he gradually moved away from neoliberalism and became more of a centrist figure, a change which especially became clear during his first term as Prime Minister.

Verhofstadt’s recipe includes a common energy policy.

“We have still 28 different energy policies with high energy prices. So by having one European energy community this prices should go down.”

Verhofstadt, a founder of the Spinelli group of European federalists is presenting his brand of liberal federalism as an antidote to Euroscepticsm.