Great maneuvers underway for the construction of the Europe to come. The outcome of the elections indicated a increasingly fragmented political situation in the old continent, with the sovereign forces on the rise but not so much and at the same time the partnership between Populars and Socialists, which characterized the last legislatures in Strasbourg, which would not be so easy to replicate. This time, in fact, the two major political forces represented in the European Parliament, both declining in consensus, will need at least an agreement with the Liberal Democrats of Alde, who obtained the best result in their history, rising from 69 to 109 seats, thanks to the consensus for the outgoing competition commissioner Marghret Vestager but above all to the leadership of the French president Emmanuel Macron, who all in all resisted the impact of Le Pen and stands as the balance for a future agreement among the pro-European forces.
However, agreement on the president of the Commission will be difficult to find and could take time: it is probable that the new Commission will not take office before the autumn, thus leaving the outgoing president Jean-Claude Juncker - who is waiting for a letter of reassurance within a few days on accounts from Italy – in the saddle until the next budget laws. There will therefore be no time to change the rules of the game, as also argued by the Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, who with his 34% aims to build a new group of 100-150 MEPs, making use of the collaboration of Nigel Farage and perhaps of the Hungarian sovereign Viktor Orbán. However, the game is entirely in the hands of Macron: the French president took action immediately after the vote by scheduling a long series of preliminary meetings from which only the Italian premier Giuseppe Conte seems to be excluded at the moment. Macron already on Monday received his Spanish colleague Pedro Sanchez, leader of the largest country where the socialists won (winning only in Spain, Portugal, Holland and Sweden) at the Elysée Palace and today, Tuesday, on the sidelines of the first European Council, he meets in a bilateral Angela Merkel, but also 9 other heads of government, including those of the Visegrad countries.
According to rumors, Macron seems intent on defending two hypotheses for the presidency of the Commission: the French Michel Barnier, who belongs to the EPP family but is very close to the progressive positions of the French president himself, and the Danish Vestager, who was among the candidates for the EU leadership of the Alde. Vestager would also have the support of the socialists, who however will try until the end to support their candidate, the Dutch Frans Timmermans, who would also be the first choice of Democratic Party MEPs. On the other hand, it should be excluded that the new president of the European Commission is the popular German Manfred Weber, who was also the favorite on the eve: precisely in Germany the EPP has lost many and Merkel, who supports him, is now at the end of her political career and it is not said that he still has the strength to impose his preference.
