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For months, Martin Schulz has kept his career options open. Should he seek a new term as president of the European Parliament — or head back to Germany as the Social Democrats’ (SPD) candidate for chancellor next year? Now, he appears to have decided: Berlin is Plan B.

“His priority is Brussels 100 percent,” said a source close to Schulz. That should come as a relief to MEPs in the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group and other backers of an unprecedented third term for the 60-year-old German, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

As evidence that Schulz is an indispensable part of the European machinery, his supporters point to last weekend’s intervention over the dispute that threatens to sink the EU-Canada free-trade deal. In an informal intervention, he persuaded Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland not to fly home after her frustrating talks with the holdout Belgian region of Wallonia.

To Schulz’s detractors, his intervention was a characteristic display of showmanship over substance from a man known for elbowing his way into meetings where he isn’t invited — such as the informal EU summit in Bratislava. It merely delayed her departure by a few hours, they said.

Schulz clearly believes antics like these have raised the Parliament’s profile. “Here’s what I vowed to do when I took office — I wanted to make the Parliament more visible, more audible and more influential,” he told POLITICO in an interview earlier this year. “And I get the feeling that I’ve pulled it off.”

“We need strong leadership, and I am sure that Martin Schulz is currently the best” — European Council President Donald Tusk

Furthermore, Schulz and his supporters argue that at least one of the heads of the EU’s three main institutions has to be a Socialist.

Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk are both from the center-right, and each unequivocally supports the status quo. Juncker has advocated for “stability,” and Tusk endorsed Schulz during a debate in Germany earlier this month. “For me Martin Schulz is the best person to guarantee that the ‘grand coalition’ [between the center-right European People's Party and the S&D] can be the basis for a rational and responsible majority in the European Parliament,” he said. “We need strong leadership, and I am sure that Martin Schulz is currently the best.”

Support for the current power-sharing arrangement comes from further afield, too. Spain’s center-right Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy made a clear link between a third Schulz presidency and the renewal of Tusk’s mandate in mid-2017, telling reporters that there was currently “reasonable equilibrium within the European institutions” before flying home from last week’s EU summit in Brussels.

Devils in the details

But Rajoy also cited the need to respect “previous pacts” — a reference to a somewhat mysterious agreement between the S&D and EPP in June 2014, in which Schulz agreed to step aside after two-and-a-half years to make way for a conservative Parliament president.

Conservative MEPs eager for Schulz to step down have been calling for him to “respect the deal.” German MEP Herbert Reul, from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), called it “outrageous” for people to push for a third term for Schulz. “He himself signed the piece of paper limiting his second term of office to two-and-a-half years,” said Reul.

The trouble for Reul is that the deal is more complex than he makes it out to be.

Since the deal was signed shortly after the European Parliament elections in 2014, none of its signatories has publicly revealed its contents. EPP group chairman Manfred Weber and Schulz have acknowledged there was a written and signed agreement.

“We trust that our written agreement will be respected,” Weber told POLITICO. “As winner of the European elections and the largest political group in the European Parliament, the EPP wants to designate the next president.”

But people in the Schulz camp with knowledge of the details told POLITICO on condition of anonymity that the deal is more than a simple agreement for Schulz to step aside after a set period of time.

At the time it was signed, former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt — a Socialist — was the front-runner for the Council presidency, with the backing of Merkel, among others, according to a source close to the German chancellor.

What Schulz and Weber agreed upon was a power-sharing mechanism based on the assumption that two Socialists — Thorning-Schmidt and Schulz — and one EPP president, Juncker, would steer the EU for the first two-and-a-half years. After that, Schulz would make way for someone from the EPP, so that there would be two conservatives and one Socialist for the remaining two-and-a-half years. “The idea was more to look at the whole spectrum at that time,” said one source familiar with the content of the deal.

In addition to Schulz and Weber, Guy Verhofstadt of the liberal ALDE group also signed up to the deal a week later.

The document was based on a vision for Europe, in which a clear “pro-European” majority would work together to make the Parliament the sun of the EU’s solar system.

The signatories had, in their view, already boosted the Parliament’s power by implementing the Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) system for the EU election that eventually resulted in Juncker’s election as Commission president. They also had plans in mind for far-reaching treaty changes during the current term — though these were largely derailed by the shock of the Brexit referendum.

Sources close to all three signatories said the document did include a clear written promise that Schulz would step aside to make room for the EPP.

But in Schulz’s view that promise was based on assumptions that never became reality; it became void the moment Tusk became Council president instead of Thorning-Schmidt.

The document also promised a post for ALDE. The signatories disagree whether that pledge was maintained.

“The assumption was that the president of the European Council had to be a Socialist,” said Udo Bullmann, a German MEP from the S&D group. “And that didn’t happen.”

A place in Berlin

Whatever the details of the agreement, the fact remains that neither Juncker, nor Tusk, nor national leaders like Rajoy, have a direct say in whether Schulz will be able to keep his job. When it comes time to cast ballots for president in January 2017, only MEPs, like Reul, will get a vote.

Which is why Schulz has made sure to keep his options in Berlin open.

Officially, the SPD plans to announce its candidate for the German chancellorship in early 2017. But few in the party believe it can wait that long — especially if Merkel enters the race as expected ahead of her party’s congress in early December.

For now, Schulz continues to hedge his bets. Running for chancellor “is always appealing,” he said on the sidelines of last week’s EU summit.

Social Democrat leaders believe they must have agreed on their own contender by then. And the fact that their current leader, Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, is polling poorly has them scrambling for alternatives.

At a book launch in Berlin on Tuesday night at a political foundation affiliated with the SPD, a moderator asked Gabriel who the party would nominate as its candidate, and then quickly admitted she had been told not to pose the question.

“Well, our initial plan was to invite Martin Schulz tonight as well,” Gabriel replied with a shrug, prompting laughter. “But we could see this question coming, so he cancelled.” Then he raised his hand. “This was a joke,” he said. “This was not true. This was irony! Don’t write this down. Dangerous.”

For many in the party, however, including in the party’s left wing, a Schulz candidacy is less a joke than something to hope for.

“I see a very, very good candidate in him,” Dietmar Woidke, the SPD premier in the state of Brandenburg, told journalists at a party convention in mid-October. And Stephan Weil, SPD state premier in Lower Saxony, said in a newspaper interview that Schulz was “certainly” fit to become chancellor.

For now, Schulz continues to hedge his bets. Running for chancellor “is always appealing,” he said on the sidelines of last week’s EU summit. “I focus on fulfilling my duties in Brussels, but I also am a leading member of SPD board.”

For Schulz, leaving Brussels would also certainly mean returning to Germany to lose an election. A recent opinion poll puts support for the SPD at 22 percent, far behind Merkel’s conservatives, who are at 35 percent. But there could be advantages to the move. If the SPD secured enough votes to remain in a coalition with Merkel, Schulz could be sure of a prestigious cabinet post, such as the foreign ministry. Otherwise, he could become the leader of the opposition — or even have a stab at becoming chancellor by forming a so-called Red-Red-Green coalition with the Greens and The Left.

However, trying to become chancellor would mean shafting a man he describes as “one of my closest friends.” “And I am careful when it comes to the word ‘friend,’” Schulz said at an SPD event in Berlin earlier this month. “Even in politics, there are friendships — and Sigmar Gabriel is my friend.”

On top of that, Schulz remains something of an outsider in Germany. Despite having secured 28 percent of German votes for the SPD in 2014’s EU elections — a level of support the party can only dream of in national elections — he remains for many in the country an unknown quantity. In one recent poll, more than one in four Germans said they hadn’t even heard of him.

It’s not clear how long Schulz can continue to keep both options open. And with deadlines for the contests in Brussels and Berlin fast approaching, it’s becoming time for Schulz to pick a horse — or risk falling in the dirt.