BRUSSELS: European Union leaders launched a new round of talks on Sunday in desperate hopes of producing a breakthrough in a diplomatic fight over who should fill top leadership posts at the 28-nation bloc.

Leaders of member countries have so far twice failed to make the key appointments, which include picking a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the EU’s powerful executive arm, the European Commission, and for Donald Tusk as head of the agenda-setting European Council.

Some discussed the roster of upcoming vacancies, which by November will include the EU’s top diplomat, the president of the European Parliament and the chief of the European Central Bank, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan that concluded on Saturday.

“There were a number of European countries in Osaka that discussed the issue, but there are no concrete compromises,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters as he arrived in Brussels for Sunday’s talks.

Asked about likely candidates for the commission job, Rutte said “That’s a moving picture.” “You think that one can­d­idate or another possibly has the best chance and it keeps shifting,” he added.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for a “spirit of compromise and above all ambition” as the leaders look to name what he described as “the new Team Europe.” “There should be two men and two women” candidates for four of the five posts up for grabs in coming weeks, he said. Macron, like Rutte, declined to say who he was backing.

The discussions about who should take the EU’s helm for the next five years and beyond could go well into the night, if not through it, warned Tusk, who will chair the meeting and said he would keep the leaders overnight and through early Monday if necessary.

Tusk met with party and government leaders on Sunday ahead of the summit. He wants nominations to be wrapped up soon, seeking to prevent further erosion of public confidence in the EU amid Brexit uncertainty and intra-bloc divisions over managing migration.

The task will not be easy. The appointments must take into account political affiliation, geography balancing east and west, north and south population size and gender. The leaders of EU institutions are supposed to impartially represent the interests of all member nations on the global stage and in Brussels.

But patriotism sets in as officials from individual member countries push candidates from their homelands to rule the roost of the bloc’s population of 500 million and the world’s biggest economic alliance.

There was hope at the leaders’ June 20-21 summit that more time would bring views closer over who will replace Juncker at the commission. German Chancellor Angela Merkel backs German conservative Manfred Weber, whose centre-right European People’s Party is the largest political group in the European Parliament but lost seats in the EU elections in May.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2019