Herman Van Rompuy Rompuy was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget from September 1993 to July 1999 in the two governments led by Jean-Luc Dehaene. As budget minister, together with finance minister Philippe Maystadt, he helped drive down Belgium's debt from a peak of 135% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1993. It fell to below 100% of GDP in 2003. He was elected to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in the 1995 general election, but as he remained a minister, he was barred from taking the seat while holding that office. After his party's defeat in the 1999 Belgian general election,
President of the European Commission Reformists, the third largest of the political groups, did not name a candidate, objecting to the principle of ' and its "tenuous" basis in law. The People's Party won a plurality (29%) in the 2014 elections, and Jean-Claude Juncker, its lead candidate, was appointed as president by the European Council. British Prime Minister David Cameron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán were the only members of the council to object to his selection. Some commentators argued that this amendment did not entitle the political parties of the Parliament to nominate candidates for the president of the Commission, and that such