Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has said that Jean-Claude Juncker should become the next president of the European Commission.

“I am holding talks in the spirit that Jean-Claude Juncker ought to become president of the European Commission,” Merkel told a conference of German Catholics in Regensburg today (30 May).

These were Merkel’s clearest words yet in support of Juncker, the candidate for Commission president of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).

As recently as Tuesday, at the end of an informal summit of national leaders in Brussels, Merkel had merely reiterated that she supported Juncker’s candidacy, refusing to state whether she believed that he should actually be appointed.

The summit tasked Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, with holding consultations on the appointment of the next Commission president (as well as several other senior posts) and report back at the end of June. Van Rompuy is supposed to gauge support among the member states and in the next European Parliament for candidates.

Four prime ministers – Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, Viktor Orbán of Hungary and the UK’s David Cameron – had spoken out against Juncker at the summit.

Merkel’s comments followed sharp criticism of her reticence from her centre-left partners in the governing coalition, the SPD. Leading SPD figures suggested that appointing anyone who had not been a lead candidate would amount to deceiving the voters.

Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the SPD and Merkel’s vice-chancellor, on Wednesday also demanded that Martin Schulz, the centre-left lead candidate for Commission president, should be given a senior post in the European Commission.