OLIVIER HOSLET/FULL via REUTERS
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with EU executive members appointed on Wednesday
New priorities, new debates: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the new EU Commissioners and their positions on Tuesday, thereby setting several important directions for EU politics in the coming years. On the one hand, there is a new emphasis on key political issues. On the other hand, new conflicts are emerging. In some cases, it is not clear whether those von der Leyen has proposed as the next commissioners will receive the necessary approval from the European Parliament after hearings.
The fact that Austrian Finance Minister Magnus Brunner will become the new EU Home Affairs Minister and will also be responsible for migration means that the EU’s protection of refugees is expected to be strengthened even further. Vienna takes a hard line on refugees. Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who is also an ÖVP, publicly supported the Rwandan model that Britain promoted in May but has since failed. According to the mandate von der Leyen gave to Brunner, the ÖVP politician will have to deal with the development of “innovative operational solutions to combat illegal migration” as the last step. You can imagine what that means.
Tariffs and Sanctions
It is clear that the future council will focus more on the current escalating global power struggle. This is reflected not only in the creation of a new post of defense minister. Finnish conservative Henna Virkkunen has been given the position of vice-president of the European Commission, responsible for the rather unusual trifecta of “security, democracy and values.” According to the mandate, their areas of responsibility extend from cybersecurity to the regulation of internet companies and the European Chips Act. This is intended to promote the development of an independent EU semiconductor industry on a global level, not only in China but also in the high-tech sector in the United States. Maroš Šefčovič from Slovakia will be responsible for “economic security” as well as trade. This means, for example, more tariffs on Chinese imports and more stringent sanctions.
The focus on global power struggles means that von der Leyen no longer puts a “European Green Deal” at the heart of her plans as she did five years ago, but rather that the EU’s competitiveness and economic claims are being pushed to the back burner in global competition. The new priorities are reflected, among other things, in the fact that the Environment Commissioner will be Jessika Roswall, a politician from the conservative Swedish Moderaterna party led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The Swedish Climate Policy Council explicitly found last year that the Swedish government’s measures had not led to the necessary reductions but rather to an increase in CO2 emissions.
Programmed crash
The “Green Deal” is still locked in the Commission. However, the Spanish Social Democrat Teresa Ribera who is in charge of it is also vice-president of the Commission and must equally devote her work to the aforementioned competitiveness. Moreover, her competences overlap with those of Stéphane Séjourné, who is officially in charge of “Prosperity (!) and Industrial Strategy”. The overlap of competences is likely to create conflicts not only because of the possible contradictions between the industrial strategy and climate policy issues, but also because Séjourné belongs to the liberal spectrum. Until the beginning of the year, he was an MEP and chair of the liberal “Renewal” group.
Brittany is bending
Moreover, it remains to be seen how the collaboration between Séjeune and von der Leyen will work out. French President Emmanuel Macron actually wanted to keep former IT executive Thierry Breton as commissioner in Brussels. But von der Leyen immediately informed Macron that he would not do so. Breton resigned from his former commissioner post on Monday, furiously accusing von der Leyen of “suspicious administration” in a letter posted to X. There have always been arguments between the two. Most recently, Breton prevented von der Leyen from appointing Markus Pieper, the CDU official he had supported in Brussels in the spring, as EU SME chief. Otherwise, Breton has repeatedly clashed with big US internet companies, especially internet companies. Séjeune, most recently foreign minister in Paris, has no particular economic experience. Who knows whether Macron will tolerate von der Leyen’s removal of Breton from power, or whether there will be retribution.
Finally, the person von der Leyen wants to appoint as EU Commissioner for Cohesion and Reform is Raffaele Fitto of the Fratelli d’Italia party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He would be the first EU commissioner from Italy’s far-right party. For nearly two years, von der Leyen has tried to work closely with Meloni, who attaches great importance to the European People’s Party (EPP), particularly under the influence of the CDU and CSU. The European Parliament group Conservative Reform Party (EKR) is trying to shift the European Parliament’s policy away from the Greens and towards the far-right, which has long been in power on the back of the pandemic. Fitto is seen as the right candidate to achieve a breakthrough. He comes from a conservative background, not a neo-fascist one, and was a minister under Silvio Berlusconi, and is considered well-connected and widely accepted in Brussels. It is unclear whether the European Parliament will approve him after the necessary hearings. But this decision could be one of the most important in Brussels in the coming years.
