Prime minister and leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Andrej Plenković, will decide in the next few months if he will seek a nomination for President of the European Commission in the May 2019 election.

According to a report by Novi List daily on Monday (March 12), members of the European People’s Party (EPP), a transnational party gathering Europe’s conservative and centre-right parties including HDZ, are expected to select their candidate in an EPP congress in Helsinki in November this year. According to sources at both the EPP and HDZ, Plenković is interested in running for that position.

In late February, prime ministers and presidents of 27 EU member states – with UK excluded due to Brexit – met in Brussels to discuss a series of procedural matters, including whether the successor to the current EC President Jean-Claude Juncker would be selected using the so-called Spitzenkandidat method, i.e. whether the job would go to a candidate proposed by one of the large Pan-European political blocs.