As Ursula von der Leyen huddled with her new team of European Union commissioners on Wednesday, it was clear who was the boss.
At the start of her first term as president of the European Commission von der Leyen was an unknown entity in European politics, having been dropped into the powerful EU role as part of a deal that worked for France and Germany. In the job she clashed with some of the other big beasts who sat around the table at the top of the commission, such as the French commissioner Thierry Breton, and Frans Timmermans, who led the EU’s far reaching “green deal” climate reforms.
Over the last two months von der Leyen had been deciding which portfolios to hand out to her new team of commissioners for the coming five years. Looking at the incoming crop and the handful of incumbents returning, few immediately stand out as candidates likely to challenge von der Leyen during her second term. The Spanish commissioner Teresa Ribera, a leftwing politician who was appointed to a senior role overseeing the EU’s green transition and will also hold the competition commissioner post, might be one.
The German president of the EU’s executive body killed off her biggest internal rival, Breton, the day before she announced how she would divide up the commissioner jobs. In a move that suited both French president Emmanuel Macron and von der Leyen, France pulled Breton as its nominee, switching in foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné, a Macron loyalist.
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Breton, who had been commissioner for the internal market during the last term, had often privately and at times publicly butted heads with von der Leyen. The animosity between the pair was no secret in Brussels. “He played and he lost,” one former French official said of Breton. Managing to successfully jettison Breton at the last minute just shows how much power von der Leyen has been able to consolidate.
This has been possible because of the current power vacuum in European politics due to the weak state both Germany and France find themselves in domestically. In Paris Macron is struggling to live with the political instability he created by calling a snap parliamentary election earlier in the year, where gains by the left and the far right have left the country with a shaky new minority government led by Michel Barnier.
In Germany chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular coalition is fighting to contain a growing political crisis over migration, under pressure from the centre right Christian Democratic Union and the far right Alternative for Germany.
Von der Leyen announced what jobs she was giving each commissioner at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, but she was quick to signal where the real power lies. The new commissioners were summoned to Brussels to meet in the commission’s Berlaymont headquarters the following day. There they were due to be handed the keys to temporary offices, where they will prepare to be grilled by MEPs in parliamentary hearings, a hurdle they must get over before they can formally take up their roles.
Most were still working out the full scope of the portfolios they had been handed the day before. At first glance it seems several commissioners were given briefs that have a degree of overlap with other colleagues. This might be an indication von der Leyen is wary of creating powerful standalone commissioners who could challenge her authority.
For example, Ireland’s commissioner Michael McGrath, who was given the role covering justice and the rule of law, will have to work with Piotr Serafin, the commissioner for the budget, on plans to tie more strings to EU funding given to countries like Hungary.
Even the way von der Leyen and her team ran the commissioner nomination process spoke to how emboldened she feels right now. There has always been a power struggle between national governments, which are distrustful of giving up further control, and the commission, which proposes EU laws and over the years has gathered more and more responsibility. The choice of who member states send as their next commissioner rests with the capitals. So von der Leyen’s request for two names to pick from, with at least one being a woman, represented an effort from the German to exert more influence over the nominations.
Ireland was one of the first to name its choice and the Government was firm in rejecting the request for a second (female) name. Privately it was clear the manner Ireland dug its heels in and pushed back against what was indeed a bit of a power grab damaged relations with von der Leyen. Others who tried to stay in the commission president’s favour, such as Finland, Slovenia, and Romania, were all rewarded when von der Leyen matched portfolios to commissioner names this week.
Things rarely go to plan in politics and von der Leyen’s second commission will likely still be dominated by both existing and unforeseen future crises, but there is no doubt about who is calling the shots in Brussels.