THE COMMISSION BALANCING ACT

By Drakoulis Goudis

With the summer break over in the EU bubble, September’s spotlight is on the formation of the 2nd Von der Leyen Commission. The European Commission is the primary executive arm of the European Union. It operates as a cabinet government with 27 members (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. There is one Commissioner per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU rather than their home country–even though several national governments seem to conveniently forget that.

Gender Balance

As the first female President of the European Commission, von der Leyen had made gender balance a key message during her first mandate, achieving near parity on her first team. For her second term, she requested that member states submit both a male and a female nominee for commissioner positions, hoping to maintain a gender-balanced executive. Excluded from this request were the member states who opted to renominate their sitting Commissioner, like France, which renominated Thierry Breton and Latvia, which renominated Valdis Dombrovskis. Also excluded is Estonia, which will have Kaja Kallas as the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Her request, though, was promptly ignored by all the member states which chose not to renew their current Commissioner’s mandate apart from Bulgaria. They refused to send forward the names of a male and a female candidate, opting instead to handpick their preferred option. This stance has created the unfortunate current situation where the proposed College of Commissioners is made of 16 men and 9 women. The Greens/EFA group visualized the situation with the following image:

Von der Leyen is trying to remediate the extremely poor optics by pressuring some countries like Slovenia to switch from a male candidate to a female one, but she doesn’t dare to address the root cause: the national governments flat out refuse to give the final pick of their country’s Commissioner (even if it is a pick between 2 candidates handpicked by them) to the President of the European Commission. It’s another episode in the never-ending power struggle between Brussels and the capitals, with gender balance ending up as collateral damage. The national governments are allergic to the idea of giving more power to a “European government”, and von der Leyen has a very poor track record of going against their wishes. Instead, she opts for backroom deals which save face but fails to address the elephant in the room.

Portfolios

Each Commissioner is responsible for a separate portfolio–but not all of them hold the same weight. In fact, some of them are invented so that we reach the magical number 27. Despite the members of the Commission being in theory working for the whole of the EU, most countries are vying for their chosen compatriot to get a portfolio that the government wants for various reasons. Some portfolios also become more or less important depending on global events: the COVID pandemic lifted the Health portfolio, held by Cypriot Stella Kyriakides, from obscurity to center stage, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine made the Enlargement portfolio, held by Orban loyalist Olivér Várhelyi, suddenly relevant–it was ironically given to him specifically so that the rest of the Commission don’t have to deal often with Hungary.

The information so far is shining some light: Poland, recently returned to “big player” status after the ousting of far-right PiS from government and the return of EU heavyweight Donald Tusk as Prime Minister, is the favorite for the Budget portfolio for Piotr Serafin. Thierry Breton is headed for Industry and Strategic Autonomy, while Commission veteran Latvian Valdis Dombrovskis will take over the Expansion portfolio, an important signal on continuous support for Eastern Europe’s ascension path, coupled with Estonian Kaja Kallas being the new face of European Foreign Policy. Spain lobbied for Ecology and Digital Affairs for Teresa Ribera while Italy is hoping to get an economy-related Pandemic Recovery Funds portfolio for Raffaele Fitto. Jozef Síkela from Czechia is eyeing the Energy portfolio. Greece has requested the Transport portfolio in a very baffling move (their pick Tzitzikostas has zero experience related to it and Greece is decades behind the EU average on everything transport-related), while Cyprus stated they do not want the Health portfolio again. Maroš Šefčovič from Slovakia is expected to retain his Inter-Institutional relationships portfolio, while Várhelyi is expected to be given the least disruptive position von der Leyen can design. A big question is the Agriculture portfolio, a hot potato nobody seems to keen to touch. It is expected to end up to a Commissioner from Eastern Europe, but all bets are off the table for this one. Another open question is whether there will be an Immigration portfolio, something that von der Leyen avoided in her first mandate.

Trial by Parliament

The European Parliament needs to approve each Commissioner individually, and it is very rare that all of them pass the test: there are grudges, inter-party power moves and past misdeeds coming to light, which are the downfall of prospective commissioners. Far-right governments’ nominees are the ones expected to face the most trouble. The Social Democrats and Renew Europe are rejecting the idea of Fitto getting an important position and Várhelyi is disliked by most of the Parliament. The Portuguese nominee Maria Luis Albuquerque is under investigation by public prosecutors in Portugal for a privatization deal during her tenure as finance minister. There could also be surprise rejections based on the hearings of each candidate, which sometimes lead to blunders which doom them.

The procedure is expected to last at least until November, and its verdict but also the procedure and events leading to it will give us some clues on the general policy orientation and red lines of both the parliamentary groups and von der Leyen’s for the upcoming 5 years. The only sure thing is that Autumn 2024 won’t be boring in Brussels and Strasbourg!