(Bloomberg) --
Emmanuel Macron arrived at Thursday's European Union summit in Brussels aiming to set the agenda for negotiations over the next commission president.
He'd spent the day canvassing support from across the bloc before sitting down for a one-to-one with Chancellor Angela Merkel. His twin objectives were to undermine Merkel's pitch for the German conservative candidate, Manfred Weber, and establish the claims of what to Macron are more acceptable rivals.
On arrival, Macron reeled off a list of potential leaders for the commission job: Brexit negotiator and Frenchman Michel Barnier, EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, or Frans Timmermans, the vice president of the outgoing commission and official nominee of the European Socialists.
For all Macron's frenetic activity, one fellow leader suggested that getting out in front may be far from a winning formula.
“In the next hours many things will be said, the first round will pass and then the real talks will start,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov told reporters. “Whoever talks first will lose.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sills in Madrid at bsills@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net;Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net
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