Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party nominee for the presidency of the European Commission, joined the three other main contenders for the job — Jean-Claude Juncker (European People’s Party), Martin Schultz (Party of European Socialists) and Ska Keller (European Green Party) — for the first ever televised debate between Commission presidency candidates.
You can watch a video of the debate, which was hosted by Euro News, below:
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4 Comments
When do we get to vote on this?
Lets all get behind Guy Verhofstadt he is a great democrat and will be a benefit to all liberal minded European citizens.
We don’t get to vote on it directly.
The future president is selected by the European Council, where we are represented by one D. Cameron.
Only a few of us ever voted for him – voters in Witney or Tory MPs when he became leader.
However he was chosen as Prime Minister by a larger group of people that the UK population DID vote for.
The story then gets better. The Council’s chosen one can must then be confirmed or vetoed by the European Parliament, who because of PR is very likely to contain someone we DID vote for .
If you are a LibDem ( or a supporter of one of the other 3 main EP parties (i.e. not a Tory or UKIP ) )it gets better still. Those four parties have got someone on the list.
Guy Verhofstadt is someone our ALDE group chose as leader and he has even spoken at a UK LibDem confereence.
On the other hand, videos of him in the EP demonstrate at times a visceral anti-british sentiment, and he has an arch-federalist view that is wholly unapealling to the british electorate at large.
It’s done now, so make the best of it, but let’s not pretend that Guy’s candidacy will do the lib-dem’s any favour in Britain… where it actually matters!