The centre-right European People's Party (EPP) elected Manfred Weber, a German MEP and member Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU), as its top candidate, the so-called Spitzenkandidat, for the next president of the European Commission, in its party congress in Helsinki on Thursday.

At the meeting of delegates from European parties which are members of the EPP, Weber received 492 votes, while his rival, former Prime Minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, got 127 votes. A total of 621 delegates took part in the vote, with two ballots declared invalid.

Weber, who heads the EPP group in the European Parliament, was a clear favourite ahead of the vote, as most of the parties active within the EPP had announced they would support him, including the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.

The EPP is currently the largest party in the European Parliament, holding 219 seats in the 751-seat assembly. They selected Weber ahead of the next European elections in May 2019, hoping he would succeed Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission.

Weber, considered a moderate politician, gave an interview to N1 television on Wednesday, saying he would work towards overcoming divisions splitting the continent, and said the response to the threat of populist rhetoric was in “reuniting Europe”.

Before the vote, Croatia’s Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, held a speech in which he called on EPP’s parties to fight populism by offering a more responsible message to their voters.

“We should demonstrate that our message is stronger, more serious, than the messages of populists who offer fear and simplistic solutions, but not the real responsibility for governing, neither at the European level, nor at the national level. This is what the EPP should demonstrate in the elections in May,” Plenkovic said.

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