Before the office of president of
the European Commission can be elected by the European Parliament by a simple
majority, the European Council must nominate a candidate. The nomination is by
qualified majority vote, in that at least 55% of the states must be in favor
and the combined population of the states voting yes must be at least 65% of
the total population of the European Union. Were any state represented in the
Council to have a veto (i.e., unanimity being required), the infeasibility
alone of getting a candidate nominated would be astounding and prohibitive for
the Union and especially its executive branch, the Commission. Just imagine if
every sitting state governor in the U.S. meeting as the Senate (which
represents the states) had to sign off on a candidate for that union’s executive-branch
president before the House of Representatives (which represents citizens) could
elect the candidate by a simple majority! From this comparison, we might wonder
whether the European Council should be tasked with nominating two candidates,
whom the representatives in the Parliament would then vote on in electing the
president of Union’s executive branch. After all, there is more than one
candidate when the U.S. House of Representatives votes (by member state!) to
elect the president if no candidate receives a majority of the votes of the
states’ electoral colleges. Indeed, the E.U. is not the only federal union in
which states have a significant role in electing the head of the (federal)
executive branch. I contend that the members of parliament should have a choice
of more than one candidate when voting for the president of the E.U.’s executive
branch. This is as of June, 2024, when the European Council was busy coming up
with a nominee; being able to present two nominees to the Parliament would have
made the Council’s job easier and the Parliament’s voting more democratic.
The full essay is at "Nominating the President of the Commission."
