Manfred Weber speaks to supporters after the release of exit polls on May 26 | Sean Gallup/Getty Images | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Anti-Weber front materializes on EU election morning after As EU leaders are set to discuss EU top jobs on Tuesday, Liberals are coming after the EPP’s Spitzenkandidat.

Manfred Weber is the face of the party that won the most votes in the European election, yet his position has never been so fragile.

Empowered Liberals on Monday led the charge against the European People's Party nominee for European Commission president — or Spitzenkandidat — firing the first shots in the fight for the most sought-after of the EU's top jobs.

“Clearly, we think the EPP candidate is today completely disqualified,” France's Pascal Canfin, No. 2 on Emmanuel Macron's En Marche list, told France Inter. "We will throw all of our weight in the balance to have either a French candidate, who could be Michel Barnier, or a candidate that is in any case much closer to the new Parliament's center of gravity, much less to the right than before."

The EPP was projected to win 180 seats in the new European Parliament as of Monday morning, a big drop from the 216 it holds in the outgoing Parliament. The center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is expected to come second with 146 seats, while the Liberals are predicted to come third, with 109 seats, followed by the Greens on 69. A disparate array of far-right and anti-EU forces is set to win at least 115 seats but it is unclear how coordinated they will be.

As horse-trading for EU top jobs — including the presidencies of the Commission, the Council and the Parliament — kicks off, all eyes are on a new centrist-liberal coalition led by Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte that will likely play a decisive role in shaping the new EU.

“The results of the 2019 European elections are clear,” the group plans to declare in a statement to be released Monday and previewed by POLITICO. “No pro-European majority is possible without the new central group that the ALDE Family, Renaissance, [Romanian party] USR Plus and other reform-driven like-minded parties will create.”

Courting the Socialists

What kind of deal the new liberal group strikes with other parties including the Socialists will be key in disputing the EPP's dominance over key EU posts.

After meeting with Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa last week, Macron is dining on Monday with Spain's Pedro Sánchez, also a Socialist, to discuss EU top jobs ahead of a meeting of all EU leaders on Tuesday.

Sanchez's PSOE finished first in Spain in the European election with 20 seats (based on provisional results), giving his party's delegation weight in the nomination process ahead.

Macron is also reaching out to EPP leaders.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, whose GERB party came first in the European election, told Nova TV last week that Macron called him to discuss EU jobs. "Here [in Bulgaria] we call it horse-trading," he said, hinting that he is ready for compromise. “When Macron called, I told him 'Colleague, Bulgaria is fighting to get the labor agency in Sofia ... Those who support me for the agency, they can ask for me to support them for something else.'"

The European Council has the legal power to nominate the Commission president, and warned repeatedly it isn't bound by the Spitzenkandidat system — under which the lead candidate of the group able to command the support of Parliament should be chosen as Commission president.

The Commission's powerful Secretary-General Martin Selmayr on Monday defended the Spitzenkandidat system at POLITICO's day-after event.

“I think it will require for any Commission to get into office to have the EPP, the Socialists and the Liberals working together, and taking into account the Greens,” he said. But "democratic parties" should stick to the Spitzenkandidat system, he suggested. “Why should they go for someone else?”

The EPP stood its ground Sunday evening.

“We have won the election,” Joseph Daul, the president of the EPP, said at a rally with Weber in Brussels. “There is only one job for us — it’s president of the Commission. It’s Manfred Weber.”

"Our family committed to the Spitzenkandidat concept ... Only a person can be elected and that one must be Spitzenkandidat," Weber said.

But even some newly elected candidates from his own political family offered Weber only lukewarm support. French EPP party Les Républicains will support him "out of coherence," Les Républicains candidate Geoffroy Didier told France Inter.

Meanwhile, one of the Liberal alliance's slate of lead candidates, Margrethe Vestager, on Sunday sought to position herself as the obvious alternative candidate.

“Yes, I want to become the EU Commission's next president," she told German broadcaster ARD.

"I have worked with breaking monopolies, this is basically what I’ve been doing for five years by now, this is also what voters have been doing today," she told reporters.

At POLITICO’s event Monday, Selmayr said he considers "Vestager as a Spitzenkandidat.”

Rym Momtaz and Christian Oliver contributed reporting.