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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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Von der Leyen’s ‘cabinet’ for the next five years did not quite achieve gender parity. Its makeup also reflects how Poland’s clout has improved in Brussels since the Tusk government took power, while Hungary’s star continues to wane.

After weeks of intensive negotiations with the 27 EU member states – and several last-minute changes – the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Tuesday her ‘cabinet’ that will serve under her for the next five years.

The European Commission is a college of 27 commissioners, with each member responsible for a specific area – similar to ministers in national governments.

Commissioners typically have political affiliations that often reflect a major party of the country from which they hail, although they never – or at least should not – represent it at the EU level: EU treaties prohibit commissioners from taking instructions from national governments, even informally, to ensure the full independence of the institution from the governments of member states, especially the most powerful ones.

Another principle of EU treaties is that each member of the college is equal – and each commissioner has an equal responsibility to deliver on the Commission’s priorities. Yet that’s an artifice – some portfolios are clearly more important than others, and the area awarded to a member state’s commissioner reflects the importance of that country within the EU and its relationship with the leaders of the Commission.

Let’s look at how the countries of Central and Southeast Europe fared when the jobs were parcelled out.

Poland

Piotr Serafin, 50, got the portfolio of Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, as had been agreed already in August by Polish Prime Minister Tusk and Commission President von der Leyen; Polish President Andrzej Duda also agreed to Serafin’s nomination at the time.

Serafin is Poland’s current permanent representative to the EU and a long-term Brussels insider. As such, he is expected to pass the obligatory European Parliament hearings on nominations, expected in November, without serious difficulty.

Serafin is considered an expert on EU budgetary matters, which he has been dealing with since 1998, when he first joined Poland’s team in charge of EU accession negotiations. He is one of a few Brussels officials to carry the nickname “calculator”, i.e. those capable of quickly and mentally translating agreements into hard amounts each country should receive or pay.

He has held important positions related to Poland’s EU membership either with the Commission or Polish government ever since.

Importantly, Serafin was the head of Tusk’s cabinet when the latter was president of the European Council between 2014 and 2019, and enjoys the full trust of the current prime minister. “An extraordinary expert… I have full trust towards him, especially since the times when we jointly fought together for more money for Poland back in 2013. It’s primarily thanks to him that we got more money than we ever expected,” Tusk wrote about Serafin in his 2019 memoir Honestly.

“Because of his role in the upcoming Commission, his huge experience in Brussels and strong relationship with Tusk, Serafin has a big chance to break through the usual hierarchy and become one of the people that von der Leyen consults with on finance matters,” Tomasz Bielecki, himself a long-term Brussels observer and correspondent for major Polish publications, wrote in the Polityka weekly. Bielecki added that, this time around, finances are more than a boring routine job, but a particularly challenging portfolio in the context of major new expenses related to defence and the future membership of Ukraine.

Hungary

Oliver Varhelyi, who in the previous college held the important Neighbourhood and Enlargement portfolio, has been offered this time around Health and Animal Welfare. Many consider this a slap in the face to the controversial commissioner and a clear message to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that the Commission is tired of his government’s disloyalty and defiance.

Health and healthcare issues are managed by the member states and the EU has – in normal conditions – no competence here. In the exceptional case of pandemics, however, it could gain in importance. Animal health is seen mostly as a farce. The European Greens applauded the establishment of a commissioner for animal welfare, but they doubt whether it will be in good hands with Varhelyi.

Varhelyi has a reputation of being a loyal servant of Prime Minister Orban and a key ally of Serbia in the EU accession process, turning a blind eye to its democratic deficiencies. He is also rumoured to be a difficult person to work with who often resorts to using harsh language with colleagues. In a European Parliament debate, with his microphone accidentally switched on, he famously called MEPS “fools”.

Hungarian Minister of European Affairs Janos Boka commented on Varhelyi’s nomination by praising him as a highly successful commissioner for enlargement. “His qualities are much needed in his new portfolio: pharmaceuticals and health industry are among the EU’s competitive edges, and together we can fight stronger against epidemics”.

Varhelyi can expect to be severely grilled by MEPs at his nomination hearing in the European Parliament and he leads a short list of those who might not be endorsed, even if he comes well prepared. Varhelyi was the second – revenge – choice for Orban in 2019, when his original candidate, former justice minister Laszlo Trocsanyi, was rejected by the European Parliament over conflicts of interests.

Czech Republic

Czech Industry Minister Jozef Sikela, a nominee of junior coalition partner STAN, has been put in charge of the International Partnerships portfolio.

The 57-year-old Sikela had long been rumoured to be named commissioner for energy or trade – even defence – most notably for his leading role in steering bloc-wide negotiations on Europe’s energy crisis and related issues Czechia’s 2022 presidency of the Council of the EU.

Thus, Tuesday’s announcement has been described by some as a blow to Prague’s hopes and expectations, though others stress that the portfolio “contains everything that was previously mentioned” in regards to Czechia’s nominee. Formerly held by Finland’s Jutta Urpilainen, the post oversees the EU’s development policy and international cooperation, including the EU’s counter-Belt and Road, 300-billion-euro-strong Global Gateway initiative for infrastructure investments in Africa and other countries from the Global South.

The portfolio “will give me the opportunity to focus on strengthening economic security, diversifying our supplies of critical raw materials and opening up new markets for European companies”, Sikela wrote on X, while Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala appeared content with his industry minister receiving “a strong economic portfolio” and “one of the largest directorates-general” of the new Commission.

Opposition party ANO’s vice-chairman Karel Havlicek responded to the announcement by saying that the Czech government had received an “invisible portfolio”, proof of Prague playing “third fiddle” in the EU despite the coalition’s “servile policy” towards Brussels.

Slovakia

The disappointment in Prague may be relative, in that von der Leyen picked her trade commissioner from just across the border: Slovakia’s Maros Sefcovic. A former presidential candidate, long-time EU commissioner and member of Slovak Prime Minister Fico’s ruling Smer party, Sefcovic was handed the powerful Trade and Economic Security portfolio, while also keeping his previous position in charge of inter-institutional relations and transparency.

The nomination is widely seen as a reward for the 58-year-old Slovak politician’s long career within European circles at a time when the Fico-led government in Bratislava is causing increasing headaches to EU leaders.

A well-known figure in the Brussels bubble, Bratislava’s former envoy to the EU and a short-lived Commission president hopeful, Sefcovic has been a European Commissioner for 15 years, with successive portfolios including culture and education, energy, and inter-institutional relations, in addition to several short-term caretaker jobs in the bloc’s executive.

On social media, Sefcovic thanked Ursula von der Leyen for the appointment, saying the task at hand was “crucial for the EU’s standing both at home and internationally”.

Romania

Roxana Minzatu has been entrusted with the People, Competences and Training portfolio and will also serve as a vice-president of the Commission.

“I am thrilled to entrust Roxana Minzatu with the role of executive vice-president for people, skills and training. She will be responsible for skills, education, culture, quality jobs, and social rights. This is under the umbrella of demographics,” said von der Leyen. “Roxana will, in particular, lead a Union of competencies and the European pillar of social rights. It will focus on those essential to uniting our society.”

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu announced Minzatu’s candidacy on September 2. The Commission insisted that Romania send a woman to this position of European Commissioner to ensure a parity balance in the future European executive. She is one of 11 women in this college of commissioners (including von der Leyen).

Minzatu, 44, heads the Department for Integrated Evaluation and Monitoring of programs financed by public and European funds, with the rank of state secretary. She has wide experience in handling European funds, acquired both in the private sector, in non-governmental organisations and through public functions.

Since 2004, she has been an integration advisor in the Romanian European Integration Ministry. She was a consultant, project manager and trainer for companies in Bucharest, Brussels and Brasov.

She also led the foundation of the Romanian Business School-Brasov; she prepared and implemented projects with European or national funding for companies, local public administrations, and NGOs.

In 2015, Minzatu held the high position of state secretary in the Ministry of European Funds. Her leadership was further recognised when she was appointed as the president of the National Agency for Public Procurement.

She served a mandate as PSD Brasov deputy (2016-2020] and was minister of European funds (June 10 – November 4, 2019).

Bulgaria

Bulgaria’s sole candidate Ekaterina Zaharieva was selected to be the EU’s commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation.

Born in 1975 in the town of Pazardjik, Zaharieva gradually built a political career in Bulgaria, through ex-prime minister Boyko Borissov’s party GERB – the dominant force in Bulgarian politics since 2008 despite a reputation tarnished by corruption scandals.

After working as a lawyer and legal advisor to Bulgaria’s Ministry of Environment and Water in the 2000s, Zaharieva entered politics in 2009 when she became the deputy minister of regional development to the minister Rosen Plevneliev, who later became president.

During Plevneliev’s mandate, she became a deputy prime minister in the 2013 interim cabinet of Marin Raykov, amid a protest wave against GERB’s governance and the first resignation of Borissov, who would eventually win back power. She also served as a deputy to interim prime minister Georgi Bliznashki in 2014 and then as a full-time deputy to Borissov between 2017-2021, during GERB’s coalition with the now defunct far-right alliance United Patriots.

She matched this position with being Bulgaria’s foreign minister (2017-2021), a period in which she stayed close to Borissov and GERB’s hardline politics towards North Macedonia and Bulgaria’s veto on Skopje’s accession to the EU over historical and cultural disputes. Her political experience also includes a stint as a justice minister between 2015-2017.

On September 9, Zaharieva received the nomination to be a commissioner from interim Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev, a former longtime GERB member. This was criticised by the opposition (We Continue the Change / Democratic Bulgaria), which had hoped former environment minister Julian Popov would be nominated.

Previously, a similarly-worded position (EU commissioner on Innovation, Research, Education, Culture and Youth) was occupied by another Bulgarian politician, again close to GERB – Mariya Gabriel, who came back to Sofia in 2023 to become a prime minister through a planned rotation in 2024, a plan which did not see the light of the day after the dissolution of the last coalition.

Croatia

Dubravka Suica will be the commissioner for The Mediterranean – a new department in the Commission. “I am entrusting her with this new role,” said von der Leyen, adding that Suica will also be responsible for the wider southern neighbourhood.

Until now, there was a commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement of the EU in the Commission, but that has changed with this new composition. The commissioner for EU Enlargement and the Eastern Neighbourhood is expected to be Slovenia’s Marta Kos, who has not yet been confirmed by the Slovenian parliament.

Suica is a Croatian politician of the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), who has served as a vice-president of the Commission and commissioner for Democracy and Demography since 2019. She previously served as a member of the European Parliament from 2013 to 2019.

Greece

Apostolos Tzitzikostas will be the commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, responsible for the mobility of goods and people. “These are essential sectors for our competitiveness but also for our transitions, for connecting people and driving local economies,” said von der Leyen.

Tzitzikostas, 46, is a member of the governing party of New Democracy. Since 2013, he has served as governor of the region of Central Macedonia, and was elected head of the Greek delegation and vice-president of the European Committee of the Region from 2020 until 2022.

Not always the model European, Tzitzikostas criticised the 2019 ratification of the Prespa Agreement – an agreement reached in 2018 between Greece and the then-Republic of Macedonia, under the auspices of the United Nations, that resolved a long-standing name dispute between the two countries – calling it harmful and dangerous for Greece. He also participated in a protest against the agreement organised in Athens in January 2019,

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his satisfaction with his nominee’s role in the new Commission. He said that Greece’s portfolio highlights the geopolitical importance of Greece and its strategic position as a gateway country for trade, energy and networking, and its important role in connectivity and transport.

He also highlighted Greece’s success in convincing the Commission to include tourism in its portfolio. “We succeeded and convinced the European Commission that Tourism deserves its own place in European policies. And its space is Greek, as Greece is a pioneer in sustainable tourism development and can contribute with proposals and initiatives in the direction of sustainable tourism and infrastructure improvement,” Mitsotakis said.

Kostas Arvanitis, an MEP of the leftwing SYRIZA party, accused the Greek government of New Democracy and Commission President von der Leyen and Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, of trying to cover up the fatal train crash in Tempi, which cost 57 lives in 2023, by nominating Tzitzikostas as a commissioner.

“With the help of Ursula Von der Leyen and Roberta Metsola, the [Greek] government is trying to build a wall around the Tempi crash,” Arvanitis wrote on X, adding that, “Apostolos Tzitzikostas as transport commissioner and Eliza Vosenberg as head of the Committee on Transport and Tourism, TRAN, in the European Parliament will do everything they can to ensure that Europe does not push for transparency and justice.”

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head-post · 3 months ago

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European reaction to von der Leyen’s Commission

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen distributed major positions in her team, prompting varying responses among European leaders.

Poland

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk expressed satisfaction with the decision of the Commission President to hand over the much-coveted budget, anti-fraud, public administration portfolio to Polish candidate Piotr Serafin.

A strong portfolio for Polish Commissioner Piotr Serafin: budget, public administration and anti-fraud. Or, to put it simpler: money, staff and what we like best.

Poland is the largest recipient of EU funds. In 2023, it received €8.2bn. This is not the first time the country has been entrusted with the budget portfolio in the European Commission.

However, Piotr Müller, a recently elected MEP from the conservative PiS party, argued that Poland deserved an even more important seat in the new Commission. He listed industry, energy, the internal market and agriculture as key portfolios that Warsaw should have aspired to.

Germany

Von der Leyen’s proposed portfolio did not resonate with Germany’s ruling coalition parties. She provoked anger by nominating Italy’s Europe minister, Raffaele Fitto, for one of the six executive vice-presidential posts, although the positions were still to be approved by parliament.

The head of the SPD delegation in the European Parliament, René Repasi, also warned that von der Leyen would lose credibility if she nominated an Italian as her deputy, given that both his boss and his party voted against her among EU leaders and in the European Parliament. He added that only 40 per cent of the commissioners were women, contrary to von der Leyen’s pledge to restore gender parity.

However, Gunther Krichbaum, the CDU’s leading MEP on European affairs, welcomed the fact that “Commissioners belonging to the European People’s Party (EPP) will be responsible for the topics of prosperity, security, migration and agriculture, which are important for Europe.”

Italy

Italy’s ruling parties welcomed Rafaele Fitto as executive vice president, although opposition parties voiced mixed reactions. While the Social Democrats took a cautious stance, the Five Star Movement expressed strong criticism and said it wanted to vote against Fitto’s nomination in the European Parliament.

Former Prime Minister and M5S leader Giuseppe Conte condemned modern politics in his post on X:

Both at the national and international level, politics now seems exclusively devoted to pursuing a strategy of military escalation, embracing a frantic race for rearmament. (…) Today more than ever the call for peace and negotiated solutions to conflicts must rise loudly from the streets and squares of our cities. We must not surrender to the inevitability of war. For this reason, I invite you all to take to the streets: our community and all citizens.

The ruling majority remains united and sees Fitto’s appointment as a testament to the positive work of the government of current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Lega leader and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini also wished Fitto all the best, expressing confidence that “he will represent Italy’s interests with common sense and pragmatism.”

However, MEP Valentina Palmisano stated that Fitto’s experience as minister showed “clear managerial incompetence, particularly in the allocation of resources from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).”

Entrusting such a key European role to someone who failed in managing strategic funds is an unacceptable mistake. For this reason, the M5S will vote against the new European Commission and Fitto’s candidacy.

Sweden

The appointment of Jessika Roswall as European Commissioner for the Environment was received very positively by the Swedish authorities. She would “have an important job to help preserve our environment and bring balance to nature… develop a more sustainable and competitive economy,” von der Leyen stated.

At a brief press conference on Tuesday, the former Swedish minister for EU affairs said she was “very happy” with her portfolio. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was also pleased, as Roswall would oversee forestry-related issues, which he called “crucial for Sweden’s growth and climate transition.”

In the new Commission, she will work closely with Wopke Hoekstra (Netherlands), who will retain his role as Climate Commissioner, and Teresa Ribera (Spain), the new Executive Vice President in charge of clean and just transition.

Swedish Green MEP Alice Bah Kuhnke expressed concerns in a written statement:

The fact that Sweden has been given responsibility for the EU’s environmental work is worrying, given how the government has driven Swedish environmental work into the ground.

Bah Kuhnke also believes Roswall should “give good answers” at the hearing about Sweden’s rejection of the EU’s nature restoration law, which Roswall must support during her tenure.

Bulgaria

GERB leader and former prime minister Boyko Borissov expressed his gratitude for the portfolio of startups, research and innovation that von der Leyen allocated to Bulgarian appointed commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva.

Borissov was the only party leader in Sofia to comment on the portfolio, as Zaharieva is an acting MP and former minister in two of his governments.

Economy, industrialisation, competitiveness, innovation, and start-ups are the most powerful programmes which suit Bulgaria. I thank Ursula von der Leyen for what they have done for Bulgaria and this is a portfolio suitable for what we write in our programmes for Bulgaria.

Bulgaria has several supercomputers, the most modern of which, Hemus, started operating about a year ago. The money for it was allocated by the European Commission within the framework of the Operational Programme for Innovation and Growth. However, almost all European countries have such computers.

On Tuesday, GERB said Zaharieva’s portfolio was allegedly “one of the most powerful” in the European Commission, as Horizon Europe had a budget of almost 100 billion euros. However, former Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin, now a deputy from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, does not share Borissov’s enthusiasm for the importance of the portfolio.

The Bulgarian candidate received a modest portfolio, as we expected – startups, research and innovation. Bulgaria is among the worst in this field, it is not clear how this portfolio corresponds to the expertise and experience of the Bulgarian candidate-commissioner. After all, she is a former Minister of Justice and Foreign Affairs… It seems that Ursila von der Leyen was wondering what to give Zaharieva and was riding on the momentum of the last term.

He hopes that the lack of expertise in the area will not cause problems during Zaharieva’s hearing in the European Parliament.