EU centrists’ deal paves way for von der Leyen to return as commission president

Ursula von der Leyen looks likely to clinch the nomination for a second term as European Commission president under a deal by EU leaders from the three pro-European political groups that sews up the bloc’s top jobs.

According to the agreement made by the centre-right European People’s party (EPP), the Socialists and the Liberals, von der Leyen will be nominated for a second five-year mandate at the head of the EU executive at a Brussels summit on Thursday.

The serving Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, would become the EU’s chief diplomat and the former Portuguese prime minister António Costa would take on the presidency of the European Council, making him responsible for chairing EU leader summits.

The deal was struck on Tuesday by six EU leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, and his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, represented the EPP; Spain’s Pedro Sánchez joined Scholz for the Socialists, while the outgoing Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, spoke for the centrist Renew group alongside Macron.

Together they represent three pro-European groups that won 399 (55%) of the seats in European elections earlier this month.

The six men agreed the line-up in a video call on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Spanish government. As the news broke, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, reacted with fury. “The deal that the EPP made with the leftists and the liberals runs against everything that the EU was based on. Instead of inclusion, it sows the seeds of division. EU top officials should represent every member state, not just leftists and liberals,” he wrote on X.

Orbán’s hard-right Fidesz party sits alone in the European parliament, since it quit the EPP in 2021, before it was pushed out over Hungary’s declining democratic standards.

Although Orbán has long signalled he will vote against von der Leyen, he does not have the power to veto her nomination.

The decision is also likely to disappoint the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who looked visibly annoyed at a dinner meeting of EU leaders last week to discuss the top jobs. Meloni’s nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists group has overtaken Macron’s liberals to become the third largest in the European parliament, but that has so far not translated into greater influence.

Diplomats suspect, however, that Meloni is angling for Italy to have a senior economic portfolio in von der Leyen’s new commission rather than one of the three jobs at stake this week.

The top jobs puzzle appears to have been solved far more quickly than usual. Von der Leyen, a German centre-right politician, Costa, a Portuguese socialist, and Kallas, an Estonian liberal, tick the boxes of finding a political, geographical and gender balance.

Related: Why is Ursula von der Leyen out wooing voters who can’t vote for her?

More daunting for von der Leyen will be securing the backing of at least 361 of the parliament’s 720 MEPs to confirm her appointment, in a vote pencilled in for July. Despite the backing of the three groups, MEPs do not always fall into line with their national leaders. About 10-15% MEPs typically do not follow the party line in the secret ballot for European Commission president, meaning von der Leyen is likely to look elsewhere – to Meloni’s ECR or the Greens – to assure her return to office.

EU diplomats expect the three names to be formally approved early on Thursday at a two-day EU leaders summit dedicated to the bloc’s plans for the next five years. Charles Michel, the outgoing European Council president, who chairs meetings, has “been informed this morning about the renewal of the agreement announced last week”, an EU official said, referring to last Monday’s dinner meeting.

That discussion was bumpier than expected when the EPP attempted to claim a job share on the EU council presidency. The EU council president is appointed for a two-and-a-half-year term that can be renewed once. The EPP staked a claim to take the job for one of the terms, upsetting the Socialists. Sources suggested that EPP proposal had now been dropped, which eased the way for a deal.

The agreement comes after it emerged that Rutte will become Nato secretary general in the autumn.

Next month the European parliament is expected to back Malta’s Roberta Metsola for a second two-and-a-half-year term as its president.