Any other qualified candidate would be preferable to Weidmann as ECB president. As things stand now, France will not have any of the top jobs. It would be a good thing if Germany didn’t have one either, because it would leave more room for other countries.
There are many EU institutions aside from the Spitzenkandidat system that require radical reform. But that can wait until we find out whether, and to what extent, the promise held out by the parliamentary election results is realized. This is not yet the time to declare victory, relax, and celebrate. There is a lot of work to be done to turn the EU into a well-functioning organization that fulfills its great potential.
George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and chairman of the Open Society Foundations. A pioneer of the hedge-fund industry, he is the author of many books, including "The Alchemy of Finance, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008" and "What it Means, and The Tragedy of the European Union."