heads of governments, in practice it was not the case. The low voter turnout creates a problem for the president's legitimacy, with the lack of a "European political sphere", but analysts claim that if citizens were voting for a list of candidates for the post of President, turn out would be much higher than that seen in recent years. Under the Treaty of Lisbon the European Council has to take into account the results of the latest European elections and, furthermore, the Parliament elects, rather than simply approve, the Council's proposed candidate. This was taken as the parliament's cue to have its parties run with candidates for the president of the Commission with the candidate of the winning party being proposed by the Council. This was partly put into practice in 2004 when the European Council selected a candidate from the political party which secured a plurality of votes in that year's election. However, at that time only a minor party had run with a specific candidate: the then fourth-placed European Green Party, which had the first true pan-European political party with a common campaign, put forward Daniel Cohn-Bendit and lost even its fourth place in the following election, becoming only the fifth-largest group in 2009 and diminishing its candidate's chances further. However, the victorious EPP only mentioned four or five people as candidates for president. There have been plans to strengthen the European political parties for them to propose candidates for future elections. The European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party indicated, in its October 2007 congress, its intention to forward a candidate for the post as part of a common campaign but failed to do so. However, the EPP selected Barroso as its candidate and, as the largest party, it was able to ensure his turn was renewed. The Socialists, disappointed at the 2009 election, agreed to put forward a candidate for Commission President at all subsequent elections. After a campaign within that party to have open primaries for said candidate, the PES Congress gathering in Brussels in November 2011 decided that the PES would designate its candidate for Commission president through primaries taking place in January 2014 in each of its member parties and organisations, before a ratification of the results by an Extraordinary PES Congress in February 2014. The lead candidate () process is the method of linking European Parliament elections by having each major European Political