UK may have no say on EU top job, front-runner warns

London: The front-runner for the EU’s top job has said David Cameron will have to yield to the rest of Europe’s choice on his selection — even though no one in Britain will have voted for the bloc he leads.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Luxembourg prime minister who heads the centre-right in the European parliamentary elections this month, said it was not his problem that British voters could not cast a ballot for anyone in his grouping.

Juncker is the top candidate for the European People’s Party (EPP), which is the dominant bloc bringing together the continent’s Christian democratic parties. Because Cameron pulled out of the EPP in 2009, arguing it was made up of European federalists, no British votes will count in his favour.

“Cameron has to stick to the clear treaty rules,” Juncker told the Guardian and four other European newspapers. “The treaty is the treaty. And whoever wins, wins.”

Juncker is fighting Martin Schulz, a German social democrat and the president of the European parliament, to replace Jose Manuel Barroso as head of the European commission. Current opinion polls have the centre-right slightly ahead of the social democrat bloc in the European parliament elections, making Juncker the leading challenger for the commission post.

This is the first time this has happened. Commission chiefs have always been appointed as a result of a stitch-up between EU national leaders. In what is claimed to be a more democratic process, for the first time the blocs of parties in the European elections have selected their own contenders for the commission job.

“The question is not whether we are supported in Great Britain,” Juncker said in a campaign debate between the two front-runners staged by the Guardian and its European newspaper partners. “The question is rather why does Great Britain not stick to the vote of the continental Europeans. There are another 27 countries who will have voted this way.”

But senior officials and diplomats in Brussels say that Cameron is not the only national leader deeply unhappy with this new “democratic” approach, which some see as a power-grab by the European parliament in determining who should lead the commission.

“It completely changes the way the EU is governed, the way the commission works,” said a senior diplomat. “You can’t vote for the EPP in Britain. It’s preposterous, ludicrous.”

Immediately after the elections at the end of the month, national EU leaders are to dine in Brussels to thrash out who should take over at the commission. Under the Lisbon treaty, their nomination has to take account of the election results and be supported by an absolute majority in the parliament.

It is possible that neither of the two front-runners will ultimately get the job, though that would risk accusations of a democratic fiasco.

Leaving Britain out of his argument, Schulz said: “If these 27 [government heads] say after the elections that they’re not taking either of us, that would really be a deviation from democracy and would do great damage.”

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has declined to support Schulz and Labour has told the German not to campaign for his Party of European Socialists (PES) in Britain. Schulz is currently criss-crossing the continent and last week made it to Northern Ireland but stayed away from the rest of the UK.

While Juncker emphasised that it was not his problem that Britons could not vote for him, he has also highlighted negotiations with Cameron aimed at keeping Britain in the EU as a central part of his pitch for the commission job.

But he added that an “accommodation” with Britain should not entail reopening the EU treaties, as pushed by the prime minister.

He said he had received no overtures from the British government, but added: “We can’t escape this debate with the UK. It will be wise to start with this issue.”

While accepting that he was out of the running for votes in Britain, Juncker stressed that his rival, Schulz, was also not supported there. The difference is that the Labour party belongs to the PES bloc and that votes cast for Labour in the UK automatically help Schulz’s cause.

“The British campaign is a special election campaign for all of us,” said Schulz. “But Great Britain is only one country of 28. Convincing [Cameron] to support me would be rather difficult. He will have an important say, but certainly not the final say.”