The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wants to start building the new team of commissioners right after the holidays. This Thursday, a week after being re-elected to the European Parliament, the head of the Community Executive has asked the governments of the Member States by letter to present their candidates for commissioner before 30 August. The German conservative wants to have a gender-balanced college, she says in the letter, and that is why she asks them to suggest two names, one man and one woman. The request, which she already made in 2019, when the current team was created, does not apply to those who have decided that the current commissioner will stay, as in the case of Slovakia, with Maros Sefcovic (vice-president for the green agenda), or Latvia, with Valdis Dombrovskis (economic vice-president). Some governments, such as Ireland, have already said that they will ignore the request.
The fight for the juiciest portfolios has thus begun. Several member states, such as Italy, have already announced their aspirations for an economic post. In fact, the ultra-conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is actively pursuing this task; she has also called for a commissioner to be in charge of the “de-bureaucratisation” of the Union. The post of Enlargement, with an eye on the great integration towards the east and the reforms that the EU must undertake until then, is also coveted.
Von der Leyen will have to work hard to get all the pieces right (and not just because of gender balance; she will also have to strike a good balance between regions and political families when she hands out the vice-presidencies and the most sought-after portfolios). The balances will also have to take into account the favours she has promised to each country in exchange for supporting her for a second term at the head of the Community Executive. Spain wants to appoint the third vice-president and Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, who is aiming for a portfolio related to energy and climate.
The new college will also have new portfolios, such as that of a commissioner for the Mediterranean, who will be in charge of relations with the southern neighbourhood and who will be very focused on immigration and on the agreements to curb arrivals to the community club signed with countries such as Egypt, Tunisia or Mauritania. Many see the current vice-president for the so-called European Way of Life, the Greek Margaritis Schinas, in that position, although President Kyriakos Mitsotakis has not yet clarified who he will appoint as commissioner for his country and the post has many suitors. The Cypriot government also aspires to the new post related to the Mediterranean.
There will also be a defence commissioner, a responsibility that the eastern countries had called for, although the EU has no powers except in industrial matters. Whoever exercises this responsibility may face some suspicions from the governments of the member states on this sensitive issue.
In her speech calling for re-election last Thursday in Strasbourg, Von der Leyen also announced that one of the commissioners would be responsible, within another portfolio, for the issue of housing, a structural problem in several Member States that the Community Executive wants to address with an “affordable housing strategy”. This is a promise she made to the Social Democrats in exchange for their support in the parliamentary vote. Until now, housing has not been considered a competence of the Commission, but as happened with health due to the Covid-19 pandemic, where Brussels even took charge of the centralised purchase of vaccines, this is not an impediment.
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So far, only the Netherlands has officially and in writing appointed its candidate for Commissioner: the new leaders want the same one, Wopke Hoekstra, to continue, who is now in charge of Climate and who is also aiming for an economic portfolio. The rest of the names will start to arrive now that Von der Leyen has requested them by letter, diplomatic sources predict. But the process does not end there. Once the portfolios have been distributed, the candidates for Commissioner will have to undergo scrutiny by the European Parliament on their possible conflicts of interest, European commitment or general competence. In 2019, in Von der Leyen’s first team, the European Parliament rejected the candidates for Commissioners from France, Hungary and Romania, who had to send another proposal.
