Research not on the vision list of candidates for Commission President

With around two weeks until the European elections on 22-25 May, future visions for research have not featured in the campaign speeches and pronouncements of candidates vying to be the next president of the Commission.

The candidates – the socialist (S&D) party leader, Martin Schulz, the conservative (EPP) Jean-Claude Juncker, the liberal (Alde) Guy Verhofstadt and the Green party representative Ska Keller, came face to face in two debates on 28 and 29 April. On both occasions their ambitions – if any - for the future of European innovation went unspoken.

Unemployment, austerity, social injustice and the pressures of immigration are the prevailing campaign issues.

Although the substance of candidates’ potential innovation policies have not been aired in the campaign, Schulz has said repeatedly that he favours freeing up more credit for Europe’s small and medium companies (SMEs); Keller has called for more investment in green technologies; Verhofstadt has advocated integrating energy markets further, and both he and Juncker have spoken about their visions for the digital economy.

Whereas in the past the process of selecting the president was down to backroom horse trading, for the first time in this year EU member states must take account of the election results when selecting the next president of the European Commission.

When voters go to the polls to vote for their MEP, they will indirectly be expressing an opinion on who they want to see as Commission president. A vote for an MEP from the S&D party group will imply a preference for Schulz as president.

Current opinion polls have the centre-right EPP party slightly ahead of the social democrat bloc in the European parliament elections, making Juncker the leading challenger for the Commission post.

Debating Europe’s innovation future

The candidates have faced each other in a handful of televised debates, with the final one set for 15 May.

On Monday 28 April, the Dutch town of Maastricht hosted the first. The 90-minute debate spanned subjects loosely divided into the categories of the economy, immigration and the rise of euroscepticism. Research and innovation was only directly referred to once – by Schulz.

He told the audience his main proposal here would be making cheap loans available for SMEs through a combination of structural funds and European Investment Bank (EIB) backing – a policy which already exists.   

“If those companies hired young people, they would get privileged access to cheap credit,” he added.

At other times in the campaign, Schulz’s message has been more explicit. On a stop-off in Romania on 26 April he visited a laser technology project outside the city. The visit, Schultz said, “symbolises the direction I want to lead Europe,” and the technology, “illustrates the vital role of new industrialisation in bringing quality job creation back to the EU.”

While campaigning for “more Europe”, Verhofstadt said in the Maastricht debate that he is for giving SMEs a break when it comes to red tape. “We have too much regulation, for example, the colour of olive oil is regulated,” he said. “I am against a super-state or too much bureaucracy.”

If the first debate was a warm-up, slightly more coherent visions for innovation could be distilled from the second, held in the European Parliament on 29 April.

When asked how the Commission could help create jobs, Keller said that, “We can create the right incentives – I think we missed a big opportunity with the last EU budget… [the Greens] had proposed research and development funding for green technologies and it’s a great pity that two big groups [the EPP and S&D] supported budget cuts in these areas.”

Renewable energy producers lack the right incentives as a result, Keller claimed.

Schulz joined Keller in advocating more investment in energy efficiency. “Our industry should develop very smart re-industrialisation, combining energy efficiency with modern products,” he said.

Digital economy

The candidates do recognise the potential of digital technologies to promote jobs and growth. “We are today completely dependent on United States digital companies like Facebook, Google and Apple,” Schulz said in the first debate. “The question is: are we ready to create a European digital market with European companies?”

Juncker too, puts great stock in the potential of ICT in Europe. “The internet and digital communications can transform our economies as profoundly as the steam engine did in the 18th century or electricity did in the 19th century,” he writes on his campaign page. 

“We have to end the regulatory silos in telecoms and copyright regulation, in data protection and in the application of European competition rules,” he adds.

Verhofstadt’s thinking in this area is probably the most developed of any of the candidates.

His four-point “digital fast forward” plan wants to see the EU re-balance a situation where it spends €277 billion on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and only €1 billion on the roll-out of broadband.

“Let's start to spend a smaller percentage on cows and start to invest in high speed broadband, in digital training and education to give youngsters more chances to get a job and [foster] an ecosystem of entrepreneurs across Europe,” Verhofstadt says.

He also sees a commercial opportunity in concerns about privacy on the web. “Smart privacy regulation can and should be an incentive to develop new applications and technologies,” Verhofstadt believes. “Just as the carbon emission standards delivered more efficient and cleaner cars, privacy protection can kick-start our own European technology environment.”

Who really calls the shots over choice of Commission president?

The Lisbon Treaty stipulates that the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose a candidate for the Commission, taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations.

The chosen candidate will then, “be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members” (Article 17.7 Treaty on the European Union).

It will be difficult for member states to ignore this provision, which presents the new election process as more democratic. But there has been some criticism. The UK government is staunchly against it and views the Parliament as hijacking the system. The Netherland’s prime minister Mark Rutte has also expressed his displeasure.

"The Treaty clearly describes that [the election results] are to be 'taken into account'," said the German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year. “There’s no automatic linkage between number of votes and [top positions] to be filled – not to me.”

Backroom deals have been the prevailing method of picking a new president to date, and it’s not clear that this way of doing business is going to be halted.  

Two compromise leaders frequently mentioned are International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde and Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Schulz, who continues to lead the parliament while he is campaigning, has made it plain that the traditional way of doing things risks a showdown with the new parliament.

An informal summit is due to take place on 27 May, two days after the European elections, where Council president Herman Van Rompuy will be responsible for securing member states’ agreement on the top jobs.