German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will lock h...
BRUSSELS - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will lock horns in Brussels on Tuesday as European Union leaders meet to begin bargaining over who will take the bloc’s top jobs for the next five years.
The centrist European People’s Party and Socialists & Democrats can only count on 326 seats in the new, 751-strong chamber. That is short of the 376-seat majority needed to approve a new head for the bloc’s executive European Commission. The EU would risk an institutional logjam if talks are prolonged, leaving it unable to make key policy decisions at a time when it faces a more assertive Russia, China’s growing economic might and an unpredictable U.S. president.
But Weber has so far failed to rally the other EU assembly groups and a dinner he had wanted to host late on Monday with the S&D, the liberal ALDE and the Greens was canceled.Together, those four parties would hold 504 seats in the new EU chamber, according to the latest provisional results, comfortably enough to approve or reject any pick made by the 28 national leaders for the top Brussels posting.
A raft of separate face-to-face talks will take place in Brussels on Tuesday before all the leaders — including outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May — meet at 1600 GMT. Unanimity is not required and current Commission president Juncker got the job despite opposition from London and with Budapest abstaining in 2014.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Macron, Merkel seek common ground on EU Commission president pick: officialFrench President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel don't ...
Read more »
Google complying with EU order in shopping case, says EU's VestagerGoogle is complying with an EU order to boost competition in online shopping, Eu...
Read more »
Nationalists surge in EU Parliament, but pro-EU parties remain dominantPro-European parties kept a firm grip on the EU parliament on Monday as liberal ...
Read more »
Pro-EU Dutch parties see surprise gains in first results of EU electionDutch mainstream, EU-supporting political parties made gains in the first test o...
Read more »
German growth rebound driven by lively household spendingGerman household spending rose at its strongest pace in eight years, driving a r...
Read more »
German envoy visits Iran to mediate as tensions riseA senior German diplomat was in Tehran on Thursday for meetings with Iranian off...
Read more »
Veteran German auto boss joins board of U.S. self-driving software startupA company working to make open-source self-driving software reliable enough to b...
Read more »
Iran tells German envoy its patience is over: FarsIran told a German envoy seeking to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal that its pati...
Read more »
The German Data Diver Who Exposed China’s Muslim CrackdownResearch by Adrian Zenz, a born-again Christian anthropologist working alone in a German suburb, thrust China and the West into one of their biggest clashes over human rights in decades, after he showed how China built internment camps and surveillance networks and recruited police officers to run them.
Read more »