European leaders will meet on Tuesday to launch the process for divvying up the European Union’s top jobs.

At the end of this year, five big jobs fall vacant. The EU will need a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European commission, and Donald Tusk, president of the European council.

The EU also needs new presidents at the European Central Bank and the European parliament, and a new foreign policy high representative – a post currently held by Italy’s Federica Mogherini.

EU appointments are always a fiendishly difficult political Rubik’s cube. The bloc wants a spread of leaders balancing west and east, men and women, right, left and centre.

Adding to the complexity, the European parliament has insisted it should have the biggest say over who leads the European commission. Each political group has its own lead candidate, or spitzenkandidat. But EU leaders, who have the right under European law to propose a commission president, mostly oppose what they see as a power grab by the parliament.

Here are some of the names in the frame to lead the European commission and council.

Manfred Weber

Manfred Weber arrives for the European People’s party summit in Brussels. Photograph: Sascha Steinbach/EPA

Although he has been an MEP for 15 years and leads the European People’s party group in the parliament, Manfred Weber is little known beyond Brussels. Even in his native Germany, barely a quarter of people know his name. The softly spoken Bavarian MEP has been campaigning across the continent in a quest to become European commission president. But French president Emmanuel Macron opposes his appointment, while many have doubts over his lack of executive experience.

Unlike previous commission presidents, Weber has been neither a government leader nor a national government minister. He is also struggling to win backing from fellow MEPs. But he is the candidate of German chancellor Angela Merkel, although she has misgivings about the spitzenkandidaten system that might propel him to office.

Frans Timmermans

Timmermans makes a speech as election results for the European parliament start to be announced. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The chances of the commission’s first vice-president, Frans Timmermans, getting the top job have improved after Social Democrats across Europe exceeded expectations in last week’s elections, especially in his native Netherlands. Timmermans, a former foreign minister, who speaks six languages, is best known for his eloquent defence of the rule of law against backsliding from governments in Poland, Hungary and Romania.

On the campaign trail he frequently stressed Europe’s role in tackling the climate crisis and plastic pollution, including taking a shot at Donald Trump “and his idiocy on climate change”. He is also seen as a plausible candidate to be EU foreign affairs chief, although faces tough competition from Spain’s outgoing foreign minister, Josep Borrell, as Madrid battles for greater influence in the EU.

Margrethe Vestager

Margrethe Vestager in Brussels on the night of the European elections. Photograph: Isopix/REX/Shutterstock

Best known for taking on Apple, Amazon and Google as the EU’s competition tsar, Margrethe Vestager wants to be the first woman to lead the EU commission. Born in Zealand, Denmark, Vestager was the country’s economy minister, pushing through cuts in social benefits, and becoming an inspiration for hit drama Borgen. A Liberal, she was long thought to be a favourite of Macron. But the French president has cooled on her, since she ruled against a merger of France’s Alstom and Germany’s Siemens, a tie-up both governments deemed necessary in the face of Chinese competition.

Michel Barnier

Embroiled in Brexit … the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. Photograph: Stéphanie Lecocq/EPA

The EU’s Brexit negotiator is not a candidate to become European commission president. Not officially.

But since the British government signed the Brexit withdrawal agreement last November, Barnier has been on an EU-wide speaking tour, where he has set out his vision for the continent, touching on issues from air pollution to artificial intelligence. The Frenchman had a long political career before becoming embroiled in Brexit and backstops. He was European commissioner for the internal market and France’s foreign minister. Barnier has “great qualities”, Macron said in a recent interview with Belgian newspaper Le Soir that fell just short of an endorsement. For others, he lacks the easy communication style that some think a modern commission president needs.

Kristalina Georgieva

World Bank chief executive officer Kristalina Georgieva in 2017. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

The Bulgarian economist quit her job as European commission vice president in 2017 to become chief executive officer of the World Bank. But some would like her to return to the Berlaymont. Several EU leaders proposed her name at a recent summit in Sibiu, according to Bloomberg. Georgieva was a well-regarded EU commissioner for humanitarian aid, before becoming commission vice-president, with responsibility for the EU budget. She began her political career at the World Bank and has written a textbook on microeconomics. Working in her favour, she ticks two important EU boxes: a woman and she is from eastern Europe.

Other possible candidates

Many EU jobs have gone to unheralded outsiders. No one predicted that Labour peer Catherine Ashton and Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy would take newly-created two top jobs in 2009.

Several names are going round the rumour mill. The long-serving Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, is thought to be interested in an EU job. Many have speculated over a move to Brussels for Angela Merkel, although she has repeatedly ruled out any EU job. Denmark’s former prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is a perennial name on EU job lists, as is the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.



