The European Union is facing a crucial moment. With Russia’s war against Ukraine, the climate crisis and the Union’s loss of competitiveness against the United States and China in an increasingly geopolitically unstable world, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has presented the structure of the new European Executive that will be responsible for facing the enormous challenges in a legislature heavily marked by economic security and industrial drive. The current Third Vice President of the Government of Spain and responsible for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, will have a key role in the new team, as Executive Vice President for Fair and Competitive Transition and will be responsible for Competition.
“Prosperity, security and democracy will be our priorities,” said Von der Leyen at a press conference in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Ribera is the only socialist with an important position in a Commission that, as has happened in Europe, has swung to the right and has also taken a small step back in terms of equality, with fewer women commissioners, although they are equal (40%). In fact, Von der Leyen has appointed more female vice-presidents, four, than men, two. Her appointment anchors the role of Spain, the fourth largest economy in the eurozone, as the main partner of the EU.
Ribera will replace Josep Borrell, currently the High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security, as a senior Spanish MEP and will handle key issues such as the merger investigation, the application of antitrust rules and state aid policy, which some partners have long wanted to reform. She will also play a leading role in industrial policy.
At the top of the European executive, the German conservative Von der Leyen, re-elected last July for a second term, has placed, in addition to Ribera, the French liberal Stephane Séjourné in Prosperity and Industrial Strategy. Like the Spanish one, this is a portfolio closely related to competitiveness. The Italian far-right Rafaelle Fitto will be executive vice-president for cohesion and reforms. The Latvian conservative Valdis Dombrovskis, a veteran, will have a key post in Economy and Productivity.
Poland, with Piotr Serafin, until now Warsaw’s representative to the EU, will manage the Budget portfolio in a crucial period in which many voices are calling for a reform of the packages and a change is looming in the way cohesion funds and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are distributed.
The Commission is the most powerful of the EU institutions, and can propose new regulations, sign free trade agreements and block mergers between companies, for example. It has also stepped up its role in recent years with the management of the health crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, with the joint purchase of vaccines, and with Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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The new vice-presidents – including Estonian Kaja Kallas, appointed by the member states, along with Von der Leyen as High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security – and commissioners will still have to obtain the approval of the European Parliament’s committees. The next European Commission, which will also include a commissioner in charge of the housing problem, will continue to try to address the challenge of decarbonising the economy and at the same time trying to free the EU from dependence on others, such as China, for essential raw materials, which make it vulnerable. All this at a time when the Eurosceptic far right is advancing and has left the governments of Germany and France in a bad way.
