What’s going on with choosing the EU’s top jobs?

EU leaders have put forward a slate of nominees for the bloc’s top roles. It took them several summits to decide on the names, after a series of negotiations and compromises.

Despite the all-night working and macho 15-hour sessions, they actually didn’t take that long by historical standards. That’s because Donald Tusk, the current European Council president, was keen for leaders to make their choice before the European parliament chose its president.

There are two interesting reasons for this. One is so the leaders on the council could keep the upper hand against the parliament – which given time to get up and running might have got assertive in the selection process. The second reason is that the parliament president slot being open makes a decision easier for the other jobs, because it can be used for horse trading.

The favourite for commission president going into the summit was Frans Timmermans, the centre-left socialist group’s lead candidate. But he was blocked. Most loudly taking credit for the Dutchman’s demise were the so-called Visegrad Four, central and eastern European countries. Viktor Orban’s spokesperson did a victory lap after Timmermans was ruled out.

But there was also opposition from others leaders from within the centre-right European People’s Party, who felt they had won the European election despite taking losses and didn’t want to give away the presidency that easily.

Thus, Ursula von der Leyen emerged as a compromise candidate. We still don’t know whether she’ll be commission president: she needs to be confirmed by the parliament. Will MEPs forgive EU leaders for completely ignoring their spitzenkandidat system, which tried to inject a bit of democracy into the selection process? Or will they stand up to them and send them home to pick again?

We’ll find out soon enough. No date it set for the confirmatory vote on the commission president role yet, but it’s expected in late July at the earliest, then next time MEPs return to Strasbourg.