Domestic and European politics are deeply entangled for the EU's political leaders this week as they meet to decide on who should be appointed as president of the European Commission and the shareout of other top jobs. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the contrasting cases of the United Kingdom and Germany. David Cameron will force a vote to oppose the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker, as the candidate of the political group which got the largest vote in the European Parliament elections – an appointment Angela Merkel supports. Both leaders are heavily constrained in choosing by domestic politics, public opinion and media.
Cameron argues that if the leaders appoint Juncker they will capitulate to a power grab by the European Parliament, which proposed the system of Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidates) from its political groups to provide focus and clarity for citizens in the elections. Cameron says this upsets the balance between the institutions, politicises the Commission and commits the EU towards deeper integration. Each cuts across his policy of reforming the EU to make it more acceptable to British voters before his planned referendum on membership in 2017. He has openly hinted that a failure to block Juncker could tilt the balance of British opinion. It is a risky strategy, raising real questions about his political judgment.
Merkel's commitment to accept Juncker flows from her own party's leading membership of the European People's Party of which he was the agreed candidate, from her view that there should be a closer relationship between European voting and policy-making and from the need to deepen integration to save the euro. Her preferences coincide with most German party and public opinion, just as Cameron's do with most British ones. Ireland's interests and preferences – like Germany's – favour the UK's continued membership of the EU. If it were to withdraw both would lose an ally committed to economic openness and political pragmatism. But these values must be fought for in domestic politics as well as in the European setting. Cameron's European policies and tactics have been tied up so closely with defending his position against Eurosceptics within his party and outside it that he has increasingly lost touch with mainstream conservative views elsewhere in Europe.
All the member states must come to terms with greater differentiation, as the euro zone gets deeper, leaving the UK and a dwindling number of others outside it and with an uncertain prospect of further EU enlargement, given growing public hostility to associated labour mobility. Reforms to define these changes more effectively are possible and will be a priority for the incoming Commission. But they can only be agreed by reciprocity, not on unilateral threats to withdraw.