The rise and fall of the Spitzenkandidaten in the European Union

Date

2020

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Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

The Lisbon Treaty brought about many changes to the EU, one of them being the mechanism for appointing and electing the President of the European Commission. Article 17(7) TEU, first, implies that the European Commission should take in consideration election results, when proposing a candidate, and, second, the article states that European Parliament shall elect the proposed candidate. Because of the changes to the procedures and roles both institutions have in the overall process, the European Parliament used it as an opportunity to introduce the Spitzenkandidaten logic ahead of the 2014 EP elections. The Spitzenkandidaten process is a procedure in which political parties of the EU, prior to the EP elections, nominate a lead candidate for the European Commission president post; based on the election results, candidate from the political party that won the majority in the elections would then be chosen by the European Council and approve by a vote in the European Parliament. The purpose of this master thesis is to examine the Spitzenkandidaten process in light of supranational and intergovernmental approaches to democracy and legitimacy in the EU, and to explain why the Spitzenkandidaten logic was followed in 2014 and why it was abandoned in 2019. It seeks to compare both evens in order to better understand the differences in election outcomes. The Spitzenkandidaten process is still relatively new therefore, the aim is to further the empirical research on the topic, especially in comparing botch cases and why they produced different results, despite following the same mechanism.

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