HELSINKI—Manfred Weber, a reserved Bavarian who has modeled himself on Germany’s pragmatic chancellor, won the backing of Europe’s center-right parties on Thursday to stand in the race to become European Commission president in 2019.
Weber, a German EU lawmaker, beat former Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb to become the European People’s Party’s (EPP) top candidate in the European Parliament elections next May. That makes him an early front-runner for the EU’s most influential job, the head of the bloc’s executive, which proposes legislation and negotiates free-trade deals.
