After a couple of weeks of tug-of-war, criticism, negotiations and negotiations, the leaders of the EU member states supported this Thursday night the appointment of the new leadership for the next European legislature: the German conservative Ursula von der Former Portuguese socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa for the European Council and the liberal Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, as High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security, are expected to repeat the presidency of the European Commission. This formula has been given the green light without the support of the Italian Prime Minister, the far-right Giorgia Meloni, who abstained with Von der Leyen and voted against the other two appointees to show her opposition to a process in which she has been ignored. how his ultra European political family has been isolated. The three appointments – only Costa does not need confirmation from the European Parliament – meet a gender, political and regional balance.
Von der Leyen
And 100 days into her term, the first crisis hit. In March 2020, when Ursula von der Leyen was just beginning to take over as President of the European Commission, the Covid-19 pandemic shook the world. The health crisis and the unprecedented European response marked the legislature and mandate of the 65-year-old German conservative, the first woman to lead the Community Executive, and who on Thursday received the backing of the leaders of the 27 Member States to remain in office for five more years at a turbulent time in Europe and the world.
When, in 2019, when the negotiation on the senior EU positions that the leaders had set up was blown up, the name of Von der Leyen was put on the table to head the Commission, a former medical Minister of Defense in Germany with Angela Merkel’s Government, many had not heard of her. Today she is one of the best-known faces in Europe. In the last five years, crisis after crisis, the Union has been breaking taboos – joint purchases of vaccines, the recovery fund to cushion the consequences of the pandemic, unprecedented energy measures – and has changed forever. Especially after Russia launched the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Europe agreed to finance weapons with a European intergovernmental fund.
This situation of permanent alert has marked his way of leading the European Commission, with few collegiate decisions, often ignoring the criteria of the commissioners, exceeding powers and taking credit for the team’s achievements, several community sources point out. It is the usual criticism of Von der Leyen and his decision-making style.
He also received very harsh comments for his controversial trip to Israel after the Hamas attacks on October 7. There, on the day that the Israeli army launched the military offensive on Gaza in response to the terrorist attacks, Von der Leyen met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and did not mention the violations of international humanitarian law or the protection of civilians. of the Strip. Some believe that his German mentality of almost unconditional adherence to Israel prevailed. She assures that the trip served to place the EU on the level of talks with Israel and increase its diplomatic influence.
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The German, who has been the leading candidate of her political family, the European People’s Party (EPP), to once again head the European Commission, will now face, after the backing of the leaders, a vote in the plenary session of the European Parliament. The vote, expected to take place in July in a secret process, has not yet been decided.
If she overcomes it, Von der Leyen faces a convulsive legislature, with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine dragging on, Israel’s war in Gaza threatening to spread throughout the region, the push of an increasingly assertive China and the protectionism of the United States. Also, the hypothetical return of the populist Republican Donald Trump to the White House, which could worsen the United States’ relationship with the EU and the threat of populism and the Eurosceptic (even Europhobic) extreme right, which has left Germany and France affected. and has risen in much of Europe. Von der Leyen has presented herself as the best asset in these turbulent times, the asset of stability and continuity. And he has promised to carry out an agenda with priorities set on competitiveness, defense, security and migration management.
Coast
António Costa (Lisbon, 63 years old) knows perfectly the ins and outs of the European Council after participating in it as Prime Minister of Portugal for the last eight years. An advantage to face his mandate in turbulent political times in Europe due to war and populist empowerment. Political skill is added to knowledge. Almost everyone, adversaries included, recognizes his pragmatism and talent for pact. His appointment also balances the political weight in Brussels, which is more tilted towards the East after enlargement and the war in Ukraine. The loss of weight on the Atlantic front, in which he places Portugal and Spain, among others, is a concern that he has sometimes expressed.
A member of the Socialist Party since his adolescence and a graduate in Law and Politics, Costa gave his greatest demonstration of flexibility in 2015. Despite being on the moderate wing of social democracy, he reached an agreement with the Left Bloc and the Portuguese Communist Party to present a motion of censure against the conservative Pedro Passos Coelho, who had won the elections, and become prime minister. That parliamentary agreement broke the dam that had always separated the waters of the left in Portugal and showed that he was a negotiator without taboos. Shortly afterwards, he began a period of close relations with the conservative president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, whom he facilitated in his re-election for a second term at the expense of the socialist candidate, Ana Gomes.
His first two terms in office were well-regarded and allowed him to improve electoral results until he achieved, in 2022, a historic absolute majority that, paradoxically, was punctuated by surprises. On November 7, 2023, he resigned as prime minister after an operation by the Prosecutor’s Office in which, among others, his chief of staff was arrested and his Minister of Infrastructure was charged. In addition, a Supreme Court investigation into Costa was announced to clarify his role in approving business projects. The case has been blurring as it reaches other judicial bodies, which have not seen “neither strong nor weak” evidence that points to irregularities by the former prime minister. This has led the European socialists, led by Pedro Sánchez and Olaf Scholz, to have supported him without fissures for the shortlist that will preside over the community institutions for the next term, although the investigation into him has not been closed.
In Portugal he has been almost everything: deputy, secretary of state, minister and mayor of Lisbon. The only position he has said he is not interested in is the presidency of the Republic. In recent years it was an open secret that he wanted to make the leap to Europe. He has cultivated relationships with political leaders of different stripes, from the German Christian Democrats Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen to the ultra-conservative Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and has taken national policy decisions, such as strict budgetary control, more appreciated in Brussels than in Portugal for their impact on public services.
Kallas
The Prime Minister of Estonia, the most unknown of the three names agreed upon this Thursday, will assume command of the EU diplomatic service in the next European legislature. Born in the Soviet Union, Kaja Kallas (Tallinn, 47 years old) grew up in a family linked to Estonian nationalism and deeply marked by the traumas of Stalinism. Her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were deported to Siberia in cattle cars in the 1940s. His great-grandfather was one of the founders of the Republic of Estonia in 1918, and his father, after the fall of communism, headed the central bank during the transition from the Soviet to the market economy and was the prime minister who piloted the entry of The Baltic Republic in NATO.
A lawyer specializing in competition and community law, Kallas joined the liberal Reform Party in 2010. In January 2021, after spending four years as an MEP, she became the first woman to head a Government in the Baltic country. Fervently pro-European and with a marked anti-Russian profile, Kallas has gained weight in Brussels since the start of the war in Ukraine. In the last two years, the president has given countless interviews to European media in which she has advocated redoubling military support for kyiv and the adoption of even harsher sanctions against her imperialist neighbor.
Kallas insists that Russia is waging “a shadow war” with the West and flatly rejects any negotiated solution to the war that involves ceding territory to Moscow in exchange for peace. Josep Borrell’s future successor as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy has reiterated on several occasions that if Russia does not suffer a clear defeat in Ukraine, she will attack another Eastern European country in the coming years. Last February, Moscow declared Kallas wanted for the demolition of Soviet monuments in Estonia.
Despite economic turmoil, Estonia has doubled its defence spending during the three-and-a-half years that Kallas has been in office. The Baltic republic has also become the EU member that has donated the most aid to Ukraine and the one that has received the most refugees from the invaded country in relation to its population (1.3 million inhabitants).
Her detractors in Brussels criticise her “warmongering” attitude and her lack of experience in matters relating to Latin America or Africa. In Estonia, her popularity has fallen in recent months after public broadcaster revealed that a company linked to her husband had done business – legally – in Russia during the war. In this month’s European elections, her party lost one of the two seats it held in the European Parliament and obtained its worst result in an election since 2009.
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