The European Parliament's new liberal group has a message: not Weber | Sean Gallup/Getty Images ALDE 2.0 deals blow to Weber’s Commission dream Parliament’s ‘new balance of power’ calls for candidate who ‘can build a robust majority way beyond the partisan lines,’ new group says. Translation: Not Manfred.

The European Parliament's new liberal group will on Monday declare that "no candidate has secured a majority in the European Parliament," dealing a blow to the Commission presidency chances of the European People's Party's Manfred Weber.

The group, for now calling itself “ALDE plus Renaissance plus USR Plus” and made up of the members of the original ALDE, plus French President Emmanuel Macron's MEPs and a new Romanian movement led by former PM and European Commissioner Dacian Cioloș, will make the claim in a statement to be released later Monday and previewed by POLITICO's Brussels Playbook.

“The results of the 2019 European elections are clear,” the group proclaims in the statement, which indicates the third-place getters in the EU ballot consider themselves the Continent's new kingmakers. “No pro-European majority is possible without the new central group that the ALDE Family, Renaissance, USR Plus and other reform-driven like-minded parties will create.”

The statement, which confirms the liberal group's anti-Spitzenkandidat stance, will also say: “We would be extremely vigilant about any attempt to bypass the necessary negotiations between the democratically elected stakeholders, as it would be extremely harmful to the transparency and accountability of the European democratic process."

The “new balance of power” in the European Parliament, the statement says, “calls for a Commission president candidate that can build a robust majority way beyond the partisan lines.”

The message: Not Weber.

“Our new group will be open to consider all candidates that can gather the support of the political families that will compose the future governing majority,” the statement also says, implying the Liberals want to be part of such a majority. And the new group’s “key policy issues (fight against climate change, fair taxation, migration, safety, security and prosperity),” indicate they see themselves very much in the center — both of attention and of the political spectrum.

It’s a bold stance for the third-placed (by a long way) group in the new Parliament.