The European Union should set its policy priorities for the next five years before deciding who should lead the European Commission and the European Council, four centre-right prime ministers have said after a mini-summit in Sweden.

“We concluded that first we need to focus on what the next Commission is going to do and only then we will come to the question of who is going to do that,” said Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister.

Rutte spoke at a news conference in Harpsund, the country residence of Sweden’s prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt.

The other leaders at the informal summit, which featured a boat ride and no neckties, were Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and David Cameron, the UK prime minister.

The four said that they had not discussed whether Jean-Claude Juncker, the centre-right candidate for Commission president, should get the job. Reinfeldt, Rutte and Cameron oppose Juncker and the entire system of lead candidates that turned him into the strongest contender for the Commission job.

“We in principle dislike the idea of presenting front-runners from the different parties because we think that [this] twists the balance between the institutions and the way that the Lisbon treaty is set up,” Reinfeldt said before the meeting started yesterday (9 June).

Cameron made a similar point about the constitutional role of the European Council, the body of 28 national leaders. “As democratically elected leaders of Europe we should be the ones who choose who should run this EU institution rather than accept some new process which was never agreed,” he said on arriving at Harpsund.

UK diplomats also warned against EU leaders accepting a “power shift through the back door” and setting a precedent that gives MEPs more responsibilities than those set out in the EU’s Lisbon treaty.

Diplomats suggested ahead of the meeting that the three anti-Juncker leaders would try to sway Merkel to block Juncker’s appointment.

But Merkel, who was forced late last month to endorse Juncker with less ambiguity than she had previously shown, said at today’s news conference: “I made the point that for me Jean-Claude Juncker is the candidate and I want him as the president of the European Commission.”

Cameron yesterday spoke by phone with Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, who is thought to be sceptical about Juncker. Should Italy abstain from a vote on Juncker’s nomination at a European Council on 27 June, this would create a blocking minority among the 28 national leaders.

The four did not suggest a timetable for the appointment procedure, although Merkel said that nothing had changed about the agenda for the June Council.

Yesterday (9 June), the UK’s Labour party came out with a statement that its MEPs would vote against Juncker’s confirmation in the European Parliament because he would make EU reform more difficult.

While Labour’s move has little practical effect, it is a signal that Cameron’s feelings about Juncker are widely shared in the UK and not primarily a matter of party politics.

With 20 members, the Labour delegation is among the largest in the Parliament. It is the first major delegation on the centre-left to come out against Juncker.