European Union leaders are back in Brussels for another attempt at choosing a new commission president after failing to reach a decision during almost 20 hours of talks on Sunday and Monday. The summit resumed at 11am on Tuesday but it remains unclear how the impasse can be broken despite the numerous permutations proposed so far for a package of appointments. The roles to be filled also include head of the EU parliament, the foreign policy chief and the president of the leaders’ council. Dutch Socialist Frans Timmermans is front-runner to become president of the European Commission, on the understanding that a French woman will assume the helm of the ECB. But the centre-right EPP party at the European Parliament, as well as several eastern nations, oppose Mr Timmermans’s appointment. The centre-right European People’s Party — the largest group at the European Parliament — said one its number should be president of the EU Commission, and it wants to lead the EU legislature too. That stance is the biggest obstacle to the Timmermans-led package that EU leaders have been working on. Whatever the leaders agree has to be ratified by the parliament and without the EPP they would be operating with a wafer thin majority. "Holding 2 positions out of many is not too much for election winner," EPP Vice Chair Siegfried Muresan said on Twitter last night. Leaders had hoped to swiftly agree on a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker as EU chief executive that would then allow a deal on who should take over from Mario Draghi as European Central Bank president. But despite EU leaders negotiating non-stop overnight into Monday an impasse still remains.