STRASBOURG, France: Jean-Claude Juncker Tuesday won the support of Europe’s lawmakers to become European Commission president, shifting the spotlight to his future leadership team and efforts to patch up relations with Britain after it opposed his candidacy.

Juncker, a former Luxembourg prime minister, gained backing from the European Parliament to succeed Portugal’s Jose Barroso atop the commission as of Nov. 1. The commission, the European Union’s executive arm, proposes and enforces EU laws, monitors national economies, negotiates trade deals, runs a diplomatic service and administers the bloc’s 140 billion-euro ($191 billion) budget.

The 59-year-old Luxembourger must assemble a commission team that will balance national demands for top posts, face calls to boost economic growth after the financial crisis and confront the possibility of a British exit from the 28-nation EU stemming from British Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to scale back the bloc’s powers and to hold an in-or-out referendum on membership. Each member state appoints one commissioner, whose portfolio is assigned by the president.

“I don’t want a Europe that just watches others while they are acting, sits there twiddling its thumbs while others move ahead,” Juncker, fluent in French, German and English, told the EU Parliament Tuesday in Strasbourg, France, during a speech in which he switched among all three languages. “I want a Europe that is at center stage.”

The assembly endorsed him by a vote of 422 to 250 with 47 abstentions. Juncker is due to serve a five-year term once Barroso, in office since 2004, steps down at the end of October.

Juncker, who was also head of the group of euro-area finance ministers at the height of the debt crisis, is a familiar face propelled to the top of the commission through an unfamiliar process that has pushed the EU toward a more parliamentary form of governance in the face of British objections.

Juncker ran for the commission’s top job as the candidate of Europe’s Christian Democrats during May 22-25 EU Parliament balloting in which they came in first, beating other European parties that fielded their own competitors for the post. That prompted EU leaders last month to nominate Juncker over the opposition of Cameron and his Hungarian counterpart, marking the first time that such a decision wasn’t taken unanimously and that the EU Parliament determined the nominee.

Juncker, who was Luxembourg premier for almost 19 years until December, shares Britain’s longstanding position that the EU must do more to dismantle barriers to business within the bloc. He has vowed to find a “fair deal” for Britain on its relationship with the rest of the EU, saying he wants the country to remain a member.

While being more beholden to the EU Parliament than previous commission chiefs, Juncker will face traditional constraints from national governments as a whole. EU states choose their representatives on the commission, decide on European legislation along with the 751-seat Parliament and at summits set out the bloc’s broad policy goals.

The next European summit will be held Wednesday in Brussels, where government heads are due to discuss more top personnel choices including a successor to Britain’s Catherine Ashton, currently the commissioner who acts as Europe’s foreign-policy chief.

Other top jobs for commissioners include economic and monetary affairs, competition and trade. EU efforts to overcome the debt crisis by enacting tougher controls on national budgets and forging a banking union, to curb domestic tax breaks for multinational companies and to strike a free-trade accord with the United States make these three posts all the more desirable.

The potential for conflict in filling such jobs was highlighted last week when German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble questioned whether his former French counterpart, Pierre Moscovici, potentially the next commissioner from France, would be suitable for the economic and monetary affairs job given the country’s struggle to narrow its budget deficit.

With the EU seeking to set tougher targets for industrial emissions of pollutants blamed for global warming and to reduce reliance on Russian energy amid the crisis over the Kremlin’s encroachment in Ukraine, the climate and energy portfolios in the commission may also gain in importance.

Once governments put forward their nominees for commissioners and Juncker assigns the portfolios, the candidates will face confirmation hearings in the EU Parliament as soon possibly as September. The assembly will then vote on the new commission team as a whole.