Former Finland PM Stubb bids to succeed Juncker as European Commission president

Former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb declared his bid on Tuesday to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission president. Stubb will be the second candidate to lead the center-right in the European Parliament elections in May. In a letter to fellow members of the European People’s Party (EPP), Stubb, 50, wrote that he was a “declared pro-European” who had decided to run to defend European values and to push Europe to fill a power vacuum left by the “voluntary marginalization” of the United States and Britain from world politics, Reuters reports. “It is time to rally around our cause for a strong Europe. This means mitigating unnecessary divisions between East and West, North and South,” he wrote. Stubb will challenge Germany’s Manfred Weber, head of the EPP group, and possibly other conservatives. The only other declared candidate is Slovak Socialist Maros Sefcovic, who is Juncker’s vice president for energy.