this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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A 22-year-old German politician who secretly served in Ukraine’s army now faces expulsion from the pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party after calling his own leadership “Russia-kissers.”

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[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (11 children)

In September 2018, Weber announced his candidacy (Spitzenkandidat) for the post of the President of the European Commission for the 2019 European election.[13] (Under the unofficial Spitzenkandidat system, the leader of the European party that commands the largest coalition in the European Parliament subsequent to an election to the European Parliament is likely to become the European Commission president.[5][6])

Weber's European People's Party won a plurality of seats in the European Parliament in May 2019, thus making him the lead candidate to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission unless the Spitzenkandidat system was abandoned.[5] On 28 May, leaders of EU governments tasked European Council President Donald Tusk with leading the negotiations with members of the European Parliament and national leaders to pick a new European Commission President at an EU summit in late June 2019.[7] Tusk hinted that Weber was the "lead candidate."[7] This did not materialise with Ursula von der Leyen, a fellow member of the European People's Party, being appointed president.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Weber

Haven't found it mentioned on her page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen

[–] iglou@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

Oh that! I thought you meant that when they decided of how the appointment should be done, they had a vote and ignored it.

I do see how that seems like it's a non-democratic move, but it's not. It is never up to the parliament to nominate the President of the Commission. The Parliament has a veto power, however. The Council nominates, "taking into account the result of the elections", a candidate. The Parliament then approves them or vetoes them.

Their is a lot of subtility to the "democraticness" of a system.

While systematically picking the leader of the biggest coalition may seem like the most obviously democratic choice... It is actually not always the case. Especially in the European Parliament, where majorities are rare. So, if the leader of the largest group (let's say, 30%) is impopular with the remaining 70%, who would all prefer another candidate, how is it democratic to go with the impopular candidate?

That's why the parliament has a right to veto. The Parliament voted with a majority to elect Von der Leyen, when they were all aware that Weber was the most likely candidate initially. That makes her election democratic.

Just because Weber was the likely candidate due to the election results does not mean the Parliament would have elected him in the end, and that is also a consideration when the Council nominates a candidate. As a matter of fact, he was indeed impopular with a lot of coalitions, and Von der Leyen reveived 60% of the votes, with an informal coalition supporting her that consisted of the majority of the Parliament.

[–] Nico_198X@europe.pub 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There is a LOT of misinformation about how the EU works, all pushed by bad faith actors trying to undermine the EU because together we are a threat to their influence.

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