Party nominating their candidate for Commission President prior to the Parliamentary elections. The of the largest party would then have a mandate to assume the Commission Presidency. This process was first run in 2014, and its legitimacy was contested by the Council. Background According to the treaties, the president of the European Commission is nominated by the European Council. Until 2004, this nomination was based on an informal consensus for a common candidate. However, in 2004 the centre-right EPP rejected the consensus approach ahead of the European Council meeting, and pushed through its own candidate, Barroso. The approach of national governments was to appoint the various high-profile jobs in EU institutions (European Council president, High Representative and so on) dividing them accordingly along geographic, political and gender lines. This also led to fairly low-profile figures in some cases, for it avoided candidates who had either made enemies of some national governments or who were seen as potentially challenging the Council or certain member states. Article 17.7 Unease had built up around the secretive power play that was involved in these appointments, leading to a desire for a more democratic process. At the end of 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force. It amended the appointment of the Commission President in the Treaty on European Union Article 17.7 to add the wording "taking into account the elections to the European Parliament", so that Article 17.7 now included the wording 2014 election In 2013, in preparation for the European election of 2014, Martin Schulz, then President of the European Parliament campaigned for European political parties to name lead candidates for the post of President of the European Commission; his own party group, the centre-left Party of European Socialists named Schulz as its lead candidate (). The EPP held an election Congress in Dublin, where Jean-Claude Juncker beat his rival Michel Barnier and subsequently ran as the EPP lead candidate. The European Left Party (GUE/NGL) chose Alexis Tsipras as candidate. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party and the European Green Party also selected lead candidates. The Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists did not name a candidate, objecting to the principle of and its "tenuous" basis in law. The German term for lead candidates caught on, and they became known informally as . The EPP won a relative majority (29%) in the 2014 election, and Jean-Claude Juncker, its lead