Editor’s note: This piece has been updated following the European Parliament elections on May 23rd-26th.

EUROPEAN POLITICS is turning more febrile after voters in elections for the European Parliament broke the old duopoly of the two main political “families”: the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and old centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D).

The two “big tent” groups, which have dominated the parliament since direct elections were introduced in 1979, were the biggest losers as European politics fragments. By the latest count, the two groups between them lost 87 seats in the 751-seat parliament. That, in turn, is re-opening the debate about who should run the European Commission, the powerful bureaucratic machine at the heart of the European Union, which acts as an executive, a civil service and a market regulator.

The president of the commission is nominated by national leaders, with approval from the parliament. Leaders will meet in Brussels tonight to begin discussing who should fill this and a host of senior EU jobs, among them the president of the European Council (representing leaders) and the president of the European Central Bank (ECB).

At the last European elections in 2014, the parliament tried to institutionalise the idea of the Spitzenkandidat, whereby leaders would be compelled to choose the “leading candidate” for commission president selected by the parliament on the basis of who can command a majority. Under a gentleman's agreement in 2014, the S&D made way for Jean-Claude Juncker of the EPP, whose group was the largest. The leaders acquiesced despite misgivings by Britain and Hungary.

The EPP insists that, as the largest parliamentary group (which still counts 180 seats), it should have the right again to nominate its candidate—in this case Manfred Weber, the German who leads the EPP’s parliamentary group. But foisting him on leaders will be harder this time around. To begin with, Mr Weber has no executive experience, unlike Mr Juncker, a veteran prime minister of Luxembourg.

Moreover, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is determined to halt Mr Weber and the whole Spitzenkadidat process. To do so, he is enlisting the support Pedro Sánchez, António Costa and Mark Rutte, the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands respectively. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who secured the job for Mr Juncker last time around, nominally supports Mr Weber. But she is less dominant than she used to be, and will probably not back Mr Weber at any cost; some think she is more interested in placing a hawk at the head of the ECB.

But perhaps the biggest problem for Mr Weber is that the EPP’s cosy deals with the S&D (the two groups share the presidency of the parliament on a rotating basis) can no longer be easily imposed on others. The S&D backs Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister serving as first vice-president of the commission.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), which gained 42 seats for a total of 109, also refuses to endorse Mr Weber. The Greens, who also made big gains, are critical as well. And various Eurosceptic nationalist and populist groups, notably the European Alliance of People and Nations, led by Matteo Salvini, Italy’s right-wing deputy prime minister, are determined to break the mould of European politics.

If Mr Weber is blocked, who else might become the commission’s president? Some are pushing for an alternative EPP figure, Michel Barnier, a former French foreign minister who ably held the 27 European states united in the negotiations with Britain over Brexit.

But the case for Margrethe Vestager, the powerful competition commissioner, is growing. She ticks many of the boxes needed for a successful candidate: she can get things done, she is acceptable to the centre-right EPP and the S&D. More important, is championed by the Liberals and Greens, whose votes will be needed for a majority.

Ms Vestager has served as education, interior and economy minister of Denmark, despite belonging to a small social liberal party. As a commissioner since 2014 she has applied both a liberal sense of consumer rights and an interventionist commitment to defending the little guy to the task of regulating technology giants. She has taken on tax dodgers, infringers of personal privacy and market distorters. Thrusting machos from Silicon Valley have turned up in her office berating her and come off the worse.

The EU in 2019 faces an array of security and economic threats. It needs a powerful, efficient leader with experience of the commission and a sense of how the world is changing. It needs a leader who can stand up for Europe and initiate legislation defending its citizens. It needs someone acceptable to left and right, north and south. Many candidates will put their names forward. Europe would be foolish to overlook Ms Vestager.