EU conservatives urge Germany's Scholz to respect election outcome

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is coming under pressure to support European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's bid for a second term in office, should her conservative bloc come first in next week's European Parliament elections.

The election winner has the right to propose the next commission president, the head of the conservative European People's Party (EPP), Manfred Weber, said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

"The EPP has nominated Ursula von der Leyen as candidate for the office of commission president, and if we win the election, then we expect that to be accepted," Weber told the paper.

Weber noted that the social democratic and liberal groups in the European Parliament did not back his commission candidacy on behalf of the EPP following the 2019 elections, despite their group coming first.

"And the result was a blow to European democracy," he said, stressing that this must not be repeated.

Scholz has indirectly warned von der Leyen not to try to secure another term in office after the European elections with the help of right-wing extremists.

"It is clear to me that when the next [European] Commission is formed, it must not be based on a majority in parliament that also requires the support of right-wing extremists," Scholz said at a joint press conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro in Berlin on Thursday.

In April, von der Leyen did not rule out cooperating with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, to which the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the ultra-right Brothers of Italy, also belongs.