With the end of the 2024 European elections, the process of selecting top politicians is not over. Quite the contrary, for the European Commission, the selection procedure starts right after. The European Council decided the list of nominees for the offices of EU top jobs in a package, among them the candidate for the office of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, elected by the European Parliament on the 18^th of July 2024. Her election is followed by the proposals of the Member States for commissioners, followed by their acceptance by the president-elect and the vote on the new college of commissioners as a whole.

The European People’s Party (EPP) secured most of the votes (or rather its member parties) during the election, having a strong claim for the position of the head of the European Commission. They endorsed Ursula von der Leyen as their lead candidate (“Spitzenkandidat” as it is often referenced using the borrowed German term), and her support from the EPP was made public before the European elections. She was (is) campaigning for her party and her next term as Commission president.

However, it is not entirely clear what a lead candidate is. It is not written in the Treaties; it is not included in any European legal norm in force. It is only known from proposals from the academia, political statements, the press, etc. Jean-Claude Juncker was the first to be endorsed by a European political party (namely, the EPP) as a lead candidate and having been elected. He was not a candidate formally, as there is no election norm in EU law in force that recognizes the lead candidate system. Afterward, the informal tradition did not stick as the “Spitzenkandidat” process was not applied 5 years later in the case of Ursula von der Leyen.

Juncker argued that the lead candidate process was a step in strengthening European democracy, as it secured a double legitimacy for the elected lead candidate, as the (still informal) candidate is endorsed by the European Council and the European Parliament as well. This argument is questionable as the European Parliament must endorse the name proposed by the European Council in all cases, even if the person nominated was not a lead candidate during the campaign of the European elections. Applying his logic, this already would mean a double legitimacy. The obligatory, formal introduction of the lead candidate system (or even its consolidation as a custom) would basically mean that the discretional power of the European Council to select and nominate a candidate for the position of the head of the European Commission would be more restricted as under the legal norms in force. The European Council would only be able to select the candidate from the “lead candidates” announced by the European political parties and could not select someone from the “outside”.

Interestingly, Juncker was not a candidate of his Luxemburgish party, the CSV in 2014, he was only endorsed by the EPP in statements. This is the same in the case of Ursula von der Leyen in 2024, she was the lead candidate of EPP, approved by the party congress for this role, but she did not run on any of the lists of her (arguably) former political party, the German national political party CDU. A part of public opinion and a portion of the academia will probably celebrate her election as the revival of the “Spitzenkandidat” process after the approval of the new college of commissioners, enhancing democratic legitimacy.

There are, however, interesting questions that come up with regard to democratic legitimacy. How can democratic legitimacy be enhanced in the EU, if the person who is the lead candidate does not run as a candidate of a national political party? European political parties, umbrella organizations of national political parties with no real powers or important responsibilities in the elections whatsoever (except for budgetary and representative, coordinative roles) are the ones who endorse the lead candidates. These entities do not receive a single vote, only national political parties do, who gain their seats in the European Parliament through nationally held European elections. They must win their mandates in the national arena, not in the European one. Thus, the voters do not vote for the lead candidates, unless they are on the list of one of the national political parties for European elections, which was not the case so far.

How can the “Spitzenkandidat” system enhance legitimacy, if the citizens do not cast a vote on the candidates? Without such a connection, the lead candidate process is merely a trial of the European Parliament to gain more influence in the interinstitutional balance by weakening the position of the European Council in the process. Indirect legitimacy is gained through the proposal of the European Council and the vote of the European Parliament. The citizens do vote on the MEPs and the heads of states and governments are elected or nominated in accordance with the constitutional traditions of each Member State. If the lead candidate system was introduced, there would be no change in the level of democratic legitimacy of the European Commission.

Moreover, the principle of the independence of the European Commission (Art. 18(2) TEU) is possibly better safeguarded in case the candidate for the seat of the president of the Commission is not conducting a political campaign for a position that should be politically neutral, objective and independent. Lead candidates are therefore possible future leaders of one EU organ, namely the European Commission, but not of the European citizens of the Member States. The question is not how they can lead, as they should not lead in the same way national political leaders do, but whether we should think of them more as candidates fulfilling a future role foreseen by the Treaties. A shift towards political leadership is barred by the obligations within the Treaties and would require more democratic legitimacy. The Member States agreed on the role and selection of the president of the European Commission with these constraints for a reason: the European Commission should safeguard the interest of the EU as a whole, not of the nominating political party (or parties).

Should lead candidates lead? No, they should not according to the current legal framework laid down in the Treaties. The members of the European Council are political leaders; therefore, they are the ones who are meant to lead. Perhaps this is the reason why the lead candidate process failed in 2019.

Árpád Lapu is an adviser at the Minister’s Cabinet of the Ministry of European Affairs of Hungary and an assistant research fellow at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. He was a policy adviser on constitutional issues at the European Parliament between 2019-2024. In the years 2017-2019, he worked as an adviser at the Cabinet of the Minister of Justice of Hungary, conducting comparative constitutional analyses. He has earned his JD at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary, has a BA in international relations from the University of Szeged, and an MA in European and international administration from Andrássy Gyula German Speaking University in Budapest. He has completed an LLM in international law at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain). His field of research is neutrality and non-participation in armed conflicts in international law and constitutional norms regarding permanent neutrality. He has written publications regarding the future of the EU ETS system of the European Union, institutional reform proposals and policies of the EU, and research in the field of social sciences.