EU leaders fire starting gun for top jobs race

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will lock horns in Brussels on Tuesday as European Union leaders meet to begin bargaining over who will take the bloc’s top jobs for the next five years.

An EU-wide election last week returned a European Parliament with a splintered centre and gains by pro-EU liberals and greens as well as eurosceptic nationalists and the far-right.

The centrist European People’s Party (EPP) and Socialists & Democrats (S&D) can only count on 326 seats in the new, 751-strong chamber. That is short of the 376-seat majority needed to approve a new head for the bloc’s executive European Commission. Continue