Politicising EU Leadership Selection: Explaining the Success and Failure of the Spitzenkandidaten Procedure from the perspective of Postfunctionalism

Abstract

EN With the changes in the Lisbon treaty, the party groups of the European Parliament unilaterally introduced the Spitzenkandidaten procedure, nominating lead candidates for the office of the President of the European Commission for the European elections of 2014. After its arguable success in 2014, when Jean-Claude Juncker became President of the Commission, the procedure then failed in 2019, when the national leaders in the European Council selected Ursula von der Leyen as Commission President. She had not stood as a lead candidate of her party family during the election. Considering the circumstances, the following question presents itself: Why did the Spitzenkandidaten procedure seemingly fail in 2019, when it was already successful in 2014? This thesis attempts to answer this question by formulating an argument on the basis of Postfunctionalism that domestic politicisation of the topic lead to constraining dissensus at the EU level, which resulted in the rejection of the Spitzenkandidaten procedure. The thesis tests the existence of domestic politicisation on the basis of discourse analysis of the election campaigns of significant political actors in France during the European elections of 2014 and 2019. The analysis results in the conclusion that there was no significant politicisation of...