Chronicle of an Election Foretold: The Longer-Term Trends leading to the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure and the Election of Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission President. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 102/2016 January 2016

Westlake, Martin (2016) Chronicle of an Election Foretold: The Longer-Term Trends leading to the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure and the Election of Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission President. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 102/2016 January 2016. [Discussion Paper]

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Abstract

By focusing on the near-term campaign in the 2014 European elections analysts have tended to over-look a series of longer-term trends that were jointly and inexorably leading to the Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidate) process and to some at least of the subsequent structural reforms to the Commission. The paper argues that those longer-term trends continue and that the (s)election of Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission and the structural reforms he subsequently introduced are better understood as steps in ongoing processes rather than fresh departures. Thus, what will happen in 2019 will have been conditioned not only by 2014, but also by previous elections and previous developments, as considered in this paper.

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