EU leaders nominate Juncker as next European Commission president

EU leaders have nominated former Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission in a meeting in Brussels.

In a 26-2 vote, it was only the United Kingdom PM David Cameron and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban who voted against Juncker’s nomination, who is also likely to win a vote by Euro MPs.

In a statement, the European People’s Party’s (EPP) President Joseph Daul said that the leaders had “correctly” taken into account the result of last month’s European Parliament elections. Under new EU treaty rules, the leaders have to take account of the European election result when nominating a Commission chief. The parliament will vote on the nominee next month.

“Today, the European Council correctly took into account the democratic result of the May elections and decided overwhelmingly to nominate Jean-Claude Juncker, who is also the candidate of the European political party that won the 2014 European elections,” Daul said.

“I am confident that this very large majority, which Jean-Claude Juncker received today in the European Council, will be repeated on 16 July in the European Parliament,” he said. “Juncker will negotiate with all the pro-European political groups in the European Parliament in an effort to establish the widest-possible consensus on the programmatic priorities of the Juncker Commission.”

Earlier UK Prime Minister David Cameron said “the odds are stacked against me” over Juncker, but stressed that he would stick to his principles. He believed that Juncker was too much in favour of closer political union and might block EU reform.

He also objected to the way Juncker, a 59-year-old veteran of Brussels deal-making, was put forward. He was the lead candidate of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which won last month’s European elections.

“I’ve told EU leaders they could live to regret the new process for choosing the Commission President. I’ll always stand up for UK interests,” Cameron tweeted after the decision.

The UK Conservatives - who pulled out of the EPP - suspect that the Commission is being politicised in a power grab by the European Parliament but Juncker’s supporters value his record of consensus-building and commitment to EU integration.