Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has emerged as a potential candidate to take over as head of the new European Commission, Belgian daily Le Soir reported on Thursday.

The article, which listed several potential candidates discussed in the negotiations on appointing the successor to incumbent Jean-Claude Juncker, mentioned Grabar-Kitarovic alongside Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, as well as new names in the mix, including Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, and the head of IMF Christine Lagarde.

The news of Grabar-Kitarovic being considered for EU’s top job came as a surprise for Croatian pundits, as she was thought to have her sights on running for another five-year term in December 2019.

According to Le Soir, Grabar-Kitarovic may draw wider support than Prime Minister Plenkovic, leader of the ruling centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which is a part of the EPP group in the European Parliament. Plenkovic has been designated by the EPP to represent the group in negotiations with two other alliances – the Social Democrats, and the Liberals – in the process of negotiating new EU leaders.

Before she was elected President in 2015, Grabar-Kitarovic served first as Minister for European Affairs from 2003 to 2005, and then as Foreign Minister from 2005 to 2008, both in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, ex-leader of the HDZ who is now jailed for corruption.

Grabar-Kitarovic also served as Croatia’s Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011, and from 2011 to 2014 as Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO, under Secretary Generals Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jens Stoltenberg.

Leaders of EU member countries gathered in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit to decide on EU top appointments. The negotiations have been ongoing since the European Parliament (EP) elections in May in which none of the EP groups had won a clear majority, with the conservative EPP remaining the largest group in the Parliament, but without sufficient support to allow them to shape the Commission on their own. The EPP won 173 seats in the 751-seat European Parliament, down from 221 seats they had won in the 2014 election.

It also seems that none of the three main candidates put forward by the EP groups – EPP’s Manfred Weber, Frans Timmermans from the centre-left PES, and Margrethe Vestager from the liberal ALDE party – enjoy sufficient support from other groups, Le Soir wrote.

Apart from the three leading candidates, Le Soir also mentioned incumbent Prime Ministers of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Mark Rutte, Charles Michel, and Xavier Bettel, as well as Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė, as possible contenders to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission.

Weber is facing strong opposition from the ranks of socialists and liberals, forcing the group to consider throwing another name in the ring, Le Soir reported, adding that, while EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier is seen as an ideal candidate for the spot, Grabar-Kitarovic came up as a serious candidate within the EPP.

If the deal is not reached at this summit, the next one will most likely be scheduled for July 1, a day before the new European Parliament assembly is set to convene for the first time.

Grabar-Kitarovic’s possible EU job might put a new twist on the upcoming presidency election in Croatia in December. Although she still ranks high in the polls, Grabar-Kitarovic is thought to have lost support of right-wing groups she relied on during most of her term, after recently sacking a hardline right-wing advisor. Despite not formally announcing whether she would run again, Plenkovic’s HDZ has expressed strong support for her re-election bid.