For followers of European politics, 2014 marked the sliding of "spitzenkandidat" into the general lexicon.
Translated literally from the German its apparently innocuous meaning is "top candidate". But it came to symbolise a major power dispute between the European Parliament and member states.
It was a battle that national governments woke up to too late and then lost. The drawn-out power struggle saw the term adopted wholesale into English-language reporting from Brussels.
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