By the time dinner was served, a menu of onion pie, fried haddock with Mediterranean vegetables, and rum cake, the atmosphere in the room had soured. The work dinner of the leaders of the EU countries to debate the appointments of senior officials of the Union – without mobile phones or advisors in the room of the European Council in Brussels – began two hours late and with the majority of the political ordeals already on the table. But not on that finely prepared table that did not finish illuminating last Monday a political commitment to elevate the future European leadership.
Before, in another room of that glass cube-shaped building, one of the most powerful centers of the community institutions, the negotiators of the three main European political families had begun haggling to designate those who will preside over the Commission for the next five years. European Union and the European Council and the person who will hold the head of EU diplomacy. First, a meeting of four: two popular negotiators, the Polish Donald Tusk and the Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and two social democrats, the Spanish Pedro Sánchez and the German Olaf Scholz. Then, another meeting with the Dutchman Mark Rutte and the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron, liberals. Six of the 27 heads of State and Government around a small low table with a couple of Coca-Colas, sparkling water, some fruit and a few folders.
The list of candidates was clear days before: the conservative Ursula von der Leyen to repeat as head of the community Executive; the Portuguese socialist António Costa for the Council and the Estonian liberal Kaja Kallas as high representative for Foreign Policy and Security. But the stakes began to rise. “The popular ones got greedy, they want it to be visible that they have won the European elections and they demand half of the five-year mandate of the European Council, two and a half years,” explains a source familiar with the negotiations. The Social Democrats refused. The negotiation ran aground.
The rest of the leaders waited sipping coffee or took the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings. And the main room began to get hot. “We will not accept a pre-cooked agreement,” said the far-right Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, visibly upset at not being part of this negotiating mini-summit. “The Italian has shown herself to be the winner of the European elections that have tilted the Union further to the right, as the leader of a stable Government of the third largest economy in the EU, and she saw that, when push came to shove, she was “I ignored it out of ultra,” describes a high-ranking community source.
The Italian shared her anger with the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, from her same European political family, the Reformists and Conservatives (ECR), and with the Hungarian national populist Viktor Orbán. The Swedish conservatives, Ulf Kristersson, and the Irish conservatives, Simon Harris, also began to criticize the fact that “small countries” were not taken into account. “Many leaders were very upset by the atmosphere in which more and more secret pacts were being forged, also for intermediate positions,” says a senior community source.
The high-level meeting was predicted to be somewhat different from previous ones, in which political knives predominated. As in 2014, which was preceded by a mini-summit of the north axis, opposed to the appointment of the Luxembourgish conservative Jean-Claude Juncker. Or that of 2019, in which everything was blown up when the candidate endorsed by the powerful Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Dutch social democrat Frans Timmermans, fell due to vetoes coming from the European People’s Party (EPP) itself, the German woman’s family, remember Juan Pablo García-Berdoy, who was the ambassador representing Spain to the EU at that time and until 2021. “The liberals shuffled [la danesa Margrethe] Vestager. But finally Macron put the name of Ursula von der Leyen on the table, which was a good way out for Merkel,” says the diplomat.
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After the European elections of 9-J, in which the rise of the extreme right has left the governments of France and Germany—the driving force of the EU—very affected, Russia’s war against Ukraine, Israel’s war in Gaza and a very turbulent global climate, there was a rush to close the matter. But the power play is inevitable. The main names are very clear and hardly anyone questions the Von der Leyen, Costa, Kallas shortlist – the presidency of the European Parliament, which the conservative Maltese Roberta Metsola aspires to repeat, even if it is only the first part of the legislature, is barely debated on Monday―, which meets the balance of gender, political families and regional. But everyone wants the best possible quota in the next community Executive. “Here we talk about many things, but above all about national interests, and more so the more nationalist you are,” says García-Berdoy, today head of European Public Affairs for the consulting firm LLYC.
“Everyone knows what the role of Italy is, which today has the most solid Government of all,” Meloni stressed on Wednesday, who acknowledged that he will press for his country to have “a role of the highest level.” That’s what it’s about now. In fact, some observers believe that the Italian leader’s anger is “overreacted” and a form of political pressure. But not only for this agreement, but to show what a European Council in permanent crisis could be like if the extreme right is isolated. The leaders will meet again this Thursday and Friday in Brussels to close the agreement. But the contacts do not stop. Nor with Von der Leyen, whom everyone demands a good portfolio in exchange for her support and, in some cases, also that of her parliamentary group in the decisive July vote in the European Parliament, in which she will need 361 votes out of 720.
The alliance of EPP, social democrats and liberals that has historically supported the Union – and its mandate – totals 399 seats. A figure that is too tight in a secret voting process in which the German is not even guaranteed by all of her party. This raises the stakes for the support that would give him the necessary slack, which for some sectors of the right is closer to Meloni (24 MEPs), while others look towards the Greens (51 seats). In fact, the co-leader of that group, Terry Reintke, walked through the most public rooms of the Council on Monday while dozens of journalists crowded into the cafeteria to watch the Euro Cup matches and in another area the leaders debated.
sanitary cord
Italy wants an executive vice presidency. A good position, if possible an economic portfolio, that shows Meloni’s leadership at home and abroad and that she is also president of a party with neo-fascist roots like the Brothers of Italy, recently involved in scandals of historical memory, but that some conservatives , like Von der Leyen herself, they see as an acceptable extreme right—knows how to negotiate, play and agree.
The Italian did not feel the same last Monday. Her ultra-European family, ECR – which also includes the Spaniards from Vox or the Poles from Law and Justice (PiS) – is emerging as the third political force in the European Parliament, after the collapse of the liberals. And Meloni hoped there would be some kind of hierarchy reorganization in the negotiation.
Already in the run-up to that dinner and in the previous conversations—Macron and Scholz met with Von der Leyen taking advantage of the G-7 meeting shortly before—it was clear that this was not going to be the case. In fact, the German chancellor demanded that Meloni and his ECR be excluded from the talks, according to several sources. A cordon sanitaire for far-right parties that govern (or support Executives) in eight Member States. And, like Meloni, they also want their share of power to elect the community leadership.
The Italian prime minister “did not read” well the type of summit that the EU’s senior officials decide, says a diplomatic source in a powerful delegation. It’s not so much about policy anymore as it is about politics. “In the end everything is done between the popular, socialists and liberals,” Orbán sarcastically concluded while he was waiting for his official car to return to his luxurious hotel in the center of Brussels. ”It seemed surreal to me that some presented proposals for names for high-level positions without first reflecting on what the signals were coming from citizens and what the change of pace in priorities should be,” Meloni summarized a couple of days later.
By the time coffee and herbal teas were served after dinner on Monday, and the doors were opened to advisors, it had already become clear that there would be no declaration of political commitment as Von der Leyen would want. Now is the time for the agreement, the debate, to be “marined,” Macron noted. Let it macerate until next Thursday, when leaders hope to reach an agreement that will mark the future of the EU.
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