Austria’s Kurz Chides Macron, Merkel Over EU Stitch-Up in Osaka

(Bloomberg) -- Sebastian Kurz may be out of the Austrian chancellery for the time being, but the conservative leader is still trying to broker power in the European Union.

Kurz opposed a plan to make Dutch Socialist Frans Timmermans the European Union's next chief executive. The proposal -- brought back by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron from the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan -- was wrong in its outcome and how the decision was reached, he said in an Bloomberg interview.

“We're against any backroom deals like the one in Osaka,” Kurz said Tuesday in Vienna. “The EU is more than only two countries, and it's necessary to involve all the others in decision making processes.”

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Kurz, 32, is seeking to return to power after he was ousted as Europe's youngest leader in a no-confidence vote in May. Kurz's political enemies allied to remove him from office in the fallout over an influence-peddling scandal involving his coalition partner, the far-right Freedom Party. Snap elections are scheduled for Sept. 29. He's currently polling in front.

Winner Decides

During European Parliament elections, Kurz had campaigned alongside Manfred Weber, the lead candidate for the European People's Party -- the conservative political grouping that secured the most support in the bloc-wide ballot. He said European leaders need to stand by the so-called Spitzenkandidaten process for picking the next European Commission chief or risk losing voters' trust.

“The most important thing is that the process is transparent, and that the election result is respected,” he said. “It's important that the EPP decides who will be the president of the commission.”

EU leaders are back in Brussels for another crack at choosing a new commission president after a bid to put Timmermans in the post faltered after almost 20 hours of talks on Sunday and Monday. With negotiations continuing Tuesday in Brussels, an alternative package is gathering support which would see German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen get the job.

Nominating Timmermans to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker to head the commission “would be a wrong signal because he lost the election, and we also don't want a shift to the left in the EU,” Kurz said in the interview.

Kurz, who remains in touch with other conservative party leaders as head of the Austrian People's Party, said that almost half of the EU member states were against the Timmermans deal, not just a few eastern European countries.

“It's difficult to explain to voters that they gave their vote, believing in the Spitzenkandidaten system and afterward it's not respected anymore,” he said. “All the prime ministers have to respect that we had elections of the European Parliament.”

--With assistance from Chris Reiter, Matthias Wabl and Rosalind Mathieson.

To contact the reporter on this story: Boris Groendahl in Vienna at bgroendahl@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter

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