Von der Leyen unveils proposed team of EU Commissioners

Posted by Admin September 17, 2024 World

Top of the pecking order with executive vice-president roles are the French, Finnish, Estonian, Italian, Romanian and Spanish nominees.

Ursula von der Leyen has unveiled her nominated team of European Commissioners and the policy areas or “portfolios” she will ask them to steer over the next five years, ending weeks of speculation.

Speaking to reporters in Strasbourg on Tuesday morning, the Commission chief described her newly unveiled college of Commissioners as having a “leaner” and more “interactive and inter-linked structure,” centred on the core principles of “prosperity, security and democracy.”

The Commission chief has appointed six executive vice-presidents (EVPs) – four women and two men – who will be given greater leverage over the executive’s business and oversee the work of a cluster of Commissioners.

They include Spain’s Teresa Ribera, France’s Stéphane Séjourné as well as Italy’s Raffaele Fitto, despite the European socialists recently warning von der Leyen against handing over a vice-presidency to the hard-right pick of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.

“Italy is a very important country and one of our founding members and this has to reflect also in the choice,” von der Leyen claimed, pointing out that two of the European Parliament’s 14 vice-presidents belong to Meloni’s hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

The three remaining EVP positions have been handed to Estonia’s former prime minister Kaja Kallas, nominated to be the bloc’s top diplomat by EU leaders back in June, as well as Romania’s Roxana Mînzatu and Finland’s Henna Virkkunen.

Europe’s waning competitiveness vis-à-vis global powers such as the US and China is the red thread that ties the executive vice-presidencies together.

The roster of portfolios also includes newly-created roles including a European Commissioner for defence and security (Lithuania’s former prime minister Andrius Kubilius), the Mediterranean (Croatia’s Dubravka Šuica) and housing and energy (Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen).

Here’s how the Commission chief divvied up her policy portfolios:

VDL’s proposed college of European Commissioners

Austria – Magnus Brunner – Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration

Belgium – Hadja Lahbib – Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management

Bulgaria – Ekaterina Zaharieva – Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation

Croatia – Dubravka Šuica – Commissioner for the Mediterranean

Cyprus – Costas Kadis – Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans

Czech Republic – Jozef Sikela – Commissioner for the International Partnerships

Denmark – Dan Jørgensen – Commissioner for Energy and Housing

Estonia – Kaja Kallas – Executive Vice-President for Foreign and Security Policy and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Defence Policy

Finland – Henna Virkkunen – Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Commissioner for Digital and Frontier Technologies

France – Stéphane Séjourné – Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, Commissioner for Industry, SMEs and the Single Market

Germany – Ursula von der Leyen – European Commission President

Greece – Apostolos Tzitzikostas – Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism

Hungary – Olivér Várhelyi – Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare

Ireland – Michael McGrath- Commissioner for Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law

Italy – Raffaele Fitto – Executive Vice-President for Cohesion and Reforms, Commissioner for Cohesion Policy, Regional Development and Cities

Latvia – Valdis Dombrovskis – Commissioner for Economy and Productivity; Implementation and Simplification

Lithuania – Andrius Kubilius – Commissioner for Defence and Space

Luxembourg – Christophe Hansen – Commissioner for Agriculture and Food

Malta – Glenn Micallef – Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Culture, Youth and Sport.

Netherlands – Wopke Hoekstra – Commissioner for Climate, Net-Zero and Clean Growth, also responsible for taxation

Poland – Piotr Serafin – Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration

Portugal – Maria Luis Alburquerque – Commissioner for Financial Services and the Savings and Investment Union

Romania – Roxana Mînzatu – Executive Vice-President for People, Skills and Preparedness, Commissioner for Skills, Education, Quality Jobs and Social Rights

Slovakia – Maroš Šefčovič – Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security; Interinstitutional Relations and Transparency

Slovenia – Marta Kos – Commissioner for Enlargement, also responsible for the eastern neighbourhood and Ukraine’s reconstruction

Spain – Teresa Ribera – Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Commissioner for Competition

Sweden – Jessika Roswall – Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy

‘Intensive’ negotiations with member states

Von der Leyen will now send so-called “mission letters” to each nominee outlining her own vision for their mandate. All candidates must then undergo a legal screening, a grilling by parliamentary committees and a confirmation vote before they can be installed in their new roles.

It means candidates could quickly be eliminated if they fail to garner the support of a parliament that is more politically fractured than in previous mandates. EU governments would then be forced to propose an alternative candidate.

Von der Leyen said her proposed team was the result of “intensive weeks of negotiations” with EU governments.

Political horse-trading had delayed the presentation of von der Leyen’s team, after she was forced to lobby individual member states to replace their male candidates with women to boost gender parity in the college.

Of the 27 college members confirmed on Tuesday, eleven (40%) are women, meaning a backsliding on the gender parity of the previous college. But it is still a huge improvement on the original roster of candidates that emerged after governments submitted their candidates over the summer.

“When I received the first set of nominations and candidates, we were on track for around 22% women and 78% men,” von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

“That was unacceptable. So I worked with the member states and we were able to improve the balance to 40% women and 60% men. And it shows that – as much as we have achieved – there is still so much more work to do,” she added.

A tussle for the most privileged portfolio also delayed the appointments.

“At least twenty member states asked for a strong economic portfolio. It’s not possible to have twenty Commissioners with strong economic portfolios,” the Commission chief said, adding that Commissioners, who are nominated by national governments, should represent the interests of the whole of Europe.

France’s Stéphane Séjourné has been handed over the powerful role of Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy with sweeping responsibilities over industry, SMEs and the Single Market.

It comes just one day after he was named as France’s replacement candidate after an eleventh-hour decision by incumbent Thierry Breton to resign and withdraw from the race.

Paris was reportedly offered a prestigious role “as a political trade-off” for ousting Breton, known as von der Leyen’s fiercest internal critic.

Uncertainty still hangs over Slovenia’s candidate Marta Kos, whose official sign-off in the Slovenian Parliament has been delayed due to bitter infighting between Prime Minister Robert Golob and his political opposition.