Ursula von der Leyen has given Brussels’ biggest industrial and economic jobs to more interventionist countries, vowing to boost the EU’s lagging competitiveness.
The European Commission president gave the most prominent growth-related posts in her team on Tuesday to Spain, Italy and France, which have called for more joint spending, looser budget deficit rules and a bigger role for industrial policy.
Commissioners appointed by Paris, Madrid and Rome will oversee the critical arenas of antitrust regulation, state aid policy, EU spending and industrial strategy for the bloc’s 450mn-strong single market.
Von der Leyen’s personnel choices for her new five-year term come days after former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi warned that the EU needed to do much more to avoid falling further behind the US economy.
Brussels is expected to shift focus from its drive to decarbonise over the past five years, which has generated cumbersome new bureaucratic requirements for companies.
Instead, the new commission team is likely to prioritise economic growth and higher defence spending to guard against Russia and other geopolitical rivals.
But von der Leyen said the threat of climate change remained and was “a major backdrop to what we are doing”.
The commission chief also placed key centre-right allies in charge of the EU budget and migration and relations with north African states.
Von der Leyen is seeking to head off any further rise in support for the hard right and populist parties that made big gains in June’s European parliament elections ahead of the formation of the new commission.
She ensured the critical climate and green transition role would be held by a centre-right Dutch commissioner with whom she has a trusted relationship, and gave control of trade policies to a close confidant who has served as a commissioner for 15 years.
The German commission president said her new team was “dedicated to . . . competitiveness, digitalisation and decarbonisation” and “not preserving the old . . . but embracing the new”.
France’s nominee Stéphane Séjourné would oversee an industrial strategy with “innovation and investment at its heart”, while Italy’s Raffaele Fitto would be responsible for the multibillion-euro cohesion funds that seek to narrow the gap between rich and poor parts of the EU, she said.
Spain’s Teresa Ribera, the commission’s most senior Socialist, will be one of six commission executive vice-presidents, overseeing a “clean, just and competitive transition”, including holding the powerful competition policy brief as Europe’s antitrust regulator.
In a letter to Ribera, von der Leyen said she should “modernise the EU’s competition policy”, including reviewing guidelines for approving mergers, develop a “new state aid framework” to accelerate green investments and simplify rules for government help for companies.
Poland’s Piotr Serafin will take charge of managing the bloc’s budget, including drawing up the next one for 2028-34.
Trade policy would be overseen by Slovakia’s Maroš Šefčovič, in his fourth five-year term, von der Leyen said, with climate policy and clean growth to be run by Wopke Hoekstra from the Netherlands.
The EU’s enlargement strategy, which has surged in importance following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, will be headed by Marta Kos, the Slovenian presumptive nominee.
The bloc has opened talks with Ukraine and Moldova, with several Balkan countries also in talks to join. Slovenia is a strong advocate of their admission.
Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis will police EU fiscal policy and seek to reduce red tape.
Portugal’s Maria Luís Albuquerque will lead efforts to integrate Europe’s fragmented capital markets, which has become a top priority to stop capital outflows to the US and provide more cash for EU investment. “There’s huge urgency and pressure to get it done,” von der Leyen said.
The defence commissioner, a new post given to Lithuania’s Andrius Kubilius, will be tasked with trying to convince national governments to pool spending on weapons programmes.
The European parliament will hold hearings with the candidates, who need the support of two-thirds of relevant committee members to take their jobs. There will then be a vote by the entire parliament to approve the college of commissioners, expected by November.
Von der Leyen’s initial plan was to have the new commission up and running on November 1, ahead of the US elections that take place four days later. But Slovenia held up the appointments by a week, with further delays possible if parliament rejects one or several candidates.
“It is impossible for me to foresee the length of this process,” von der Leyen said. “We are all working very hard to have the new commission in place as soon as possible.”
A potential bone of contention with the EU legislature is the proposal to give Fitto, Italy’s current Europe minister, a vice-presidential role overseeing billions in annual spending on the EU’s poorer regions, including Italy’s south.
Hungary’s nominee, Olivér Várhelyi, who has already served as enlargement commissioner, is also expected to face tough questions from MEPs owing to his closeness to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Additional reporting by Paola Tamma, Alice Hancock and Laura Dubois in Brussels
Read the full article here
