If the EU wanted to send a message to Vladimir Putin, it did so with the appointment of Kaja Kallas as head of European diplomacy last July. The leaders of the 27 opted for the then Estonian minister, whom the Russian president placed on search and capture, as their high representative. Thanks to this, they achieved a squaring of the circle in the distribution of power in the new legislature: women, liberals and Easterners. And they also made it clear that security and defence policy was a priority since the invasion of Ukraine, which precipitated the process of EU enlargement to the East.
Ursula von der Leyen, who visited kyiv two days after presenting her new team, mentioned the word security up to eight times in her speech when she presented her new college of commissioners. “Prosperity, security and democracy” will be the priorities, with competitiveness and the clean and digital transition as a “backdrop”, as the German summed up the work she has entrusted to the team with which she aspires to start her second term (the European Parliament). Parliament must now decide on the suitability of the candidates.
Beyond words and people, such as Kaja Kallas, the structure of the new Von der Leyen cabinet largely pivots around this axis. For the first time, the European Commission will have a Commissioner for Defense and Space. The position will be filled by former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, who will be another anti-Putin “hawk” in a key position. The mission that Von der Leyen has given him is to build a “genuine European Defense Union.” The message that Western leaders have been repeating for more than two years is that the war in Ukraine affects not only that country but also the security of the entire continent.
“The increasing and complex nature of the threats Europe faces has highlighted the need for Europe to take the next step in defence. We must think about the future European security architecture and invest in our own security and defence, in close cooperation with our partners and with NATO. Member States will always be responsible for their armed forces, from doctrine to deployment. This is the absolute foundation of any European nation. But Europe can do much to support this project – in terms of investment, industry, procurement, research, innovation and much more. At the heart of this work must be a simple principle: Europe must spend more, spend better, spend in Europe,” said the President.
The expected battle
In addition to the High Representative, still associated with EU foreign and security policy, and the new Defence Commissioner, Von der Leyen has elevated the issue to the heart of her cabinet with a vice-presidency for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, which will be occupied by the Finnish Henna Virkkunen. The German campaigned in an air-raid shelter in Finland and commissioned the former president of that country, Sauli Niinisto, to analyse the citizen defence strategy to gather ideas. In another sense, the concept also appears in the portfolio of the Trade Commissioner, who will be associated with economic security at a time when minimising strategic dependencies on other countries, such as raw materials or energy resources, has become a fundamental issue for the EU.
The gaze turned to the East is evident in European security policy in the face of the attack on Ukraine. But Von der Leyen has also distributed the geographical game by once again placing the Latvian Valdis Dombrovskis at the head of the economic portfolio and the right-hand man of the Pole Donald Tusk, Piotr Serafin, in the delicate budgetary mission. Poland is the fifth country in the EU and the president has brought together all these elements: it is German, France, Spain and Italy will have vice-presidencies. In fact, his justification for elevating the extreme right to this post for the first time was precisely that Italy is a founding country and one of the big ones of the community club – in addition to the fact that Giorgia Meloni’s group has two vice-presidencies in the European Parliament thanks to the fact that the EPP does not apply the cordon sanitaire that it imposes on other extreme right-wing forces.
If security is a priority of the mandate that begins now, competitiveness is its core. “The entire College is committed to competitiveness,” said Von der Leyen in her presentation of what will form the backbone of the actions of the Community government as a whole. This is where the traditional power struggles are announced. On the one hand, there will be Vice-President Teresa Ribera, to whom Germany has entrusted the important competition portfolio, with the task of reformulating the state aid framework so that the EU has options in the trade war against the United States and China and contributes to the development of the Clean Industrial Pact.
Clean replaces green
But it is also the responsibility of the French Vice-President, Stéphane Séjourné, to whom DG GROW (the powerful Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs) depends. In addition, several commissioners organically inferior to Ribera must work with Séjourné in developing the industrial strategy, which can lead to conflicts in the chains of command that will ultimately be resolved by Von der Leyen, who if anything defines it is her presidential character.
What is taking a back seat is the green agenda, which is now euphemistically replaced by the concept of “clean”. This is the name given to the other part of the portfolio assumed by Teresa Ribera, Clean and Fair Transition, against the European Green Deal, which was one of the leitmotif of the previous mandate, but which put certain economic sectors on a war footing, notably the countryside.
Economic pressure and political interests threatened von der Leyen’s ambitious environmental plan in the latter part of the previous legislature, during which her own party backed down on key laws, such as nature restoration, and even reversed a ban on the sale of diesel and petrol cars from 2035. The question now is whether the name change is just symbolic or whether Ribera will have to flex her claws to maintain the green commitments.
