How Charles Michel’s parliament plan fires up the EU’s top job battle

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Good morning, and welcome back to your dose of all the Europe news and insights you need to start your day. I hope you had a great break.

Today, we explain what European Council President Charles Michel’s run for a European parliament seat means for the rest of the Brussels machine, and I hear Belgium’s plans to get an ironclad Plan B for Ukraine funding before next month’s emergency summit.

New Year’s resolution

European Council president Charles Michel woke Brussels from its New Year slumber by announcing at the weekend that he will run in June’s EU elections. Cue a rethink of how the EU’s top jobs showdown could unfold, writes Alice Hancock.

Context: EU voters will go to the polls June 6-9 to elect members of the European parliament. In theory, the more seats each party grouping wins, the greater their right to nominate to plum jobs such as the European Commission president, European Council president and head of the EU’s foreign service.

Michel’s announcement moves conversations about that next slate of EU leaders from the realm of unsubstantiated gossip to genuine interest, thanks to a delicious scheduling quirk: should no successor be elected by the time he vacates his post early in mid-July, EU rules dictate his powers be bestowed on the leader of the country holding the council rotating presidency: Hungarian premier — and arch-Eurosceptic — Viktor Orbán.

Crucially, the top jobs are agreed as a package, with political party horse-trading. So if Michel’s job is now in play, that means they all are.

One EU diplomat said the Orbán factor was likely to focus the minds of the other 26 leaders to choose a candidate in time. “It might actually speed up the process because it gives a deadline,” they said.

Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa last year privately made clear his interest in Michel’s job, but was forced to resign in November because of a corruption probe, denting his bid.

Other candidates mentioned by officials include Danish Premier Mette Frederiksen, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Dutch socialist leader Frans Timmermans and former Italian premier Mario Draghi.

Michel, who is almost guaranteed to win a parliamentary seat as he will lead the Belgian liberal Reformist Movement party’s list of candidates, said he was running “to participate in strengthening the democratic legitimacy of this European project”.

Michel, the first sitting council president to run in the elections, later told journalists that politicians had a responsibility to run in elections like football players “have the responsibility to play in football matches”.

Yet he did not rule out the possibility of a potential tilt at becoming Belgium’s EU commissioner or another senior job: “I do not want to anticipate but I know in politics there are surprises.”

Chart du jour: Silent takeover

A flood of cheap Chinese car imports could be disastrous for Europe’s carmakers, with the EU already considering import tariffs to limit the damage.

Back-up plan

EU diplomats are preparing the legal text for an agreement to provide financial aid to Ukraine before a leaders’ summit on February 1, to ensure a pre-cooked Plan B could be swiftly adopted should Hungary continue to veto a proposal to use the bloc’s budget to help Kyiv.

Context: at a summit in December, Orbán blocked the use of the EU’s shared budget to provide financial aid to Ukraine. In response, the other 26 countries reached a political agreement to create an off-budget fund instead, should Orbán refuse to budge at the emergency gathering next month.

Belgium, which assumed the six-month rotating EU presidency last week, is pushing for diplomats to agree on a detailed plan before the summit.

“We want to get as far as we can to get the agreement that was reached at 26 into legal text, so that from the minute there is an agreement at leaders’ level, we can get a discussion going with the [European] parliament,” said Skander Nasra, Belgium’s EU sherpa, who handles relations with other governments.

That, he said, would allow the financing to be finalised by the end of March.

But that doesn’t mean giving up on convincing Orbán. There are “informal discussions ongoing to see how far we can get with Hungary to get to an agreement at 27,” Nasra added.

Aside from Ukraine support, Belgium will use the first few months of its presidency to finalise details of the EU’s asylum and migration reform agreed last month, Nasra said.

The country’s negotiators are aiming to complete around 60 pending EU laws that need to be concluded between member states and the European parliament before the chamber shifts its focus to the EU elections in June.

“There’s a political dynamic, still, in these first two to three months,” Nasra added.

What to watch today

1. German economy minister Robert Habeck meets European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels.

2. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visits Saudi Arabia to discuss the situation in Gaza.

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