The convoluted dynamics involved in allocating responsibilities to a European Commission team is as politically fraught as a game of three-dimensional chess. When European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen set out to shape her second commission she had to create a balance that simultaneously reconciled geographical interests with political ideology and party strengths, male with female, deferred to older states’ vanity and sense of entitlement, and played to the individual strengths of the nominees from 27 capitals.
Above all, von der Leyen wanted to demonstrate a new commission reflecting in its composition and structure the political priorities of the new term, a shift from the prioritisation of climate change – though still there – to a broader emphasis on investment and higher defence preparedness against Russia and geopolitical rivals. The “Investment Commission”, von der Leyen called it, citing repeatedly Mario Draghi’s recent radical report on Europe’s lagging competitiveness.
To a great extent von der Leyen appears to have succeeded. The streamlined commission will be 40 per cent female while four of six co-ordinating executive vice-presidents are women.
The predominant group in the European Parliament, von der Leyen’s own European People’s Party, will hold 14 of the 27 commissionerships, while the liberals of Renew are to get 5 portfolios, including Ireland’s Michael McGrath in the important Justice job. The 136-strong Socialist group is represented at the top of the pile by Spain’s deputy prime minister Teresa Ribera as executive vice president, with a large portfolio overseeing and co-ordinating competition and key green and economic dossiers.
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It will not be all plain sailing, however. To placate Italy’s far-right premier Giorgia Meloni, von der Leyen gave an executive VP job, and responsibility for cohesion funding, to Raffaele Fitto. His ratification by MEPs, particularly the left and Greens, looks extremely doubtful. Parliament is likely to continue its tradition of wanting to remind the commission president of its ultimate authority with at least one scalp.
Ireland’s commissionership, although not the economic portfolio it hoped for, covers two major areas in which the commission has been breaking important new ground. On the one hand, enforcing EU-wide adherence to the rule of law, notably in Hungary. On the other, legislating to force the social media giants to police themselves and the wild west of the internet and AI. The concentration of tech companies in Ireland may well have contributed to McGrath’s appointment. This is not agriculture or trade, traditionally seen as vital national interests, but a vast industry with which he/we should be familiar and whose regulation is critical to the EU as a whole in the years ahead. It is no lightweight portfolio.