N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
Now Ursula von der Leyen has cemented her second term as President of the European Commission, it is up to her and nobody else to distribute the commissioner’s portfolios to the nominees of the member states. She will ask for two names of each of them, a woman and a man. Only capitals that like to continue with their incumbent commissioner don’t have to do so. VDL will do her work ‘dictatorial’, without any consultation or any say or interference of anyone else. Her favourite way of doing her job.
As expected, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof officially backed Wopke Hoekstra, currently EU’s climate commissioner, to stay. Hoekstra’s Dutch party, the Christian Democratic Appeal, isn’t a part of Schoof’s coalition but is a part of VDL’s political family, the EPP. ‘This gives the Netherlands a strong candidate for a substantial portfolio’, the Dutch PM said. A substantial portfolio: that means a financial or economic portfolio! Financial and economic portfolios are the most coveted ones. Geopolitical portfolios, enlargement and the new Mediterranean commissioners are for some countries also desirable. But it is up to von der Leyen, member states have very limited leverage.
Prime Ministers belonging to the EPP family have also a chance, that their nominees be assigned an important portfolio . The reason that Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Greece) and Donald Tusk (Poland), pretending that they as EPP negotiators clinched the second term for VDL, are optimistic.
Another story is Giorgia Meloni’s, the far-right Italian PM. After having been wooed by VDL in her struggle to find a majority for her re-election, VDL dropped Meloni without batting an eye under pressure of Socialists, Liberals and Greens, all losers of the European elections. It probably does not bode well for the portfolio of the Italian commissioner.
Anyhow, the way portfolios are distributed in the European Commission is another good example showing how ‘ramshackle’ the EU Democracy is.
