The European Council has decided to re-visit in the autumn the question of how the president of the European Commission should be appointed.

The decision by the national leaders of the European Union’s 28 member states was taken after a bruising battle over the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker, the candidate of the centre-right European People’s Party.

Juncker was nominated by the European Council in Brussels today (27 June) and is scheduled to be confirmed by the European Parliament on 16 July. The European Council will then hold an extra meeting on the evening of 16 July to decide the remaining appointments – the president of the European Council, the EU foreign policy chief and, possibly, the president of the Eurogroup.

David Cameron, the UK’s prime minister, and Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, were the only leaders to vote against Juncker. But several other leaders hold reservations about the Spitzenkandidaten procedure that made Juncker’s nomination difficult to resist.

“If the European Council is going to allow the European Parliament to choose the president of the Commission in this way, I wanted it on the record that Britain opposed that,” Cameron said.

Click Here: cheap nrl jerseys

“It risks undermining the position of national governments, undermining the power of national parliaments, and hands new power to the European Parliament,” he said.

The language in the final summit statement is supposed to assuage fears that today’s nomination sets a precedent, giving the European Parliament and EU political parties an edge over the member states in deciding who should lead the Commission.

The statement says: “Once the new European Commission is effectively in place, the European Council will consider the process for the appointment of the President of the European Commission for the future, respecting the European treaties.”

“It’s important that the European Council has agreed to review what has happened today and consider how we appoint the European Commission president next time around,” Cameron said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was lukewarm about the Spitzenkandidaten process, made it clear that the discussion in the autumn was not about changing the Lisbon treaty, which sets out the procedure, but about using the wiggle-room opened up by its somewhat vague wording.

The treaty says: “Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members.”

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, who was among those expressing doubts about the procedure, said that “there needs to be a discussion about the Spitzenkandidaten“. “I have never been in favour of this development,” he said, adding that he had been involved in the procedure only in order to ensure that the Liberal party family to which he belongs had a candidate.

François Hollande, France’s president, said that the decision to appoint Juncker concerned “not a person, not a candidate” but that “it was a logic that started with the elections to the Parliament”.

He acknowledged that some of his European Council candidates were not happy with the process and said there could be improvements to make clearer ahead of the elections that for the designated candidates there could be consequences.

Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, played down the issue of Juncker as a person and stressed that the more important decision had been to agree strategic guidelines for the Union for the next five years.