After weeks of political battles, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented her new team of commissioners and their portfolios on Tuesday 17 September in Strasbourg. The allocation of portfolios to the 27 commissioners – one per Member State – is a key moment in launching the five-year mandate of this new Commission, the European executive.
Among the six vice-presidents of the Commission, there are four women – the Spanish Teresa Ribera, the Finnish Henna Virkkunen, the Estonian Kaja Kallas and the Romanian Roxana Mînzatu – and two men, the Frenchman Stéphane Séjourné and the Italian Raffaele Fitto, minister of Giorgia Meloni.
French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné, close to Emmanuel Macron, will take over a key portfolio of industrial strategy within the new European Commission. Chosen at the last minute to replace the outgoing Thierry Breton, he will be responsible for the recovery of European industry, a major priority for the coming years.
The new team includes eleven women, or a proportion of 40 percent, the German official announced Tuesday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.me Von der Leyen, who wanted gender parity in the 27-member team, said the initial proposals from member states had given a quota of 22% for women. “It was completely unacceptable”He stressed, acknowledging that, despite the progress made in the final stretch, there were “There is still a lot of work to be done”.
Painful negotiations
The European Union must set its priorities in a crucial geopolitical period, with the war in Ukraine, the US presidential campaign and economic competition from China.
Behind the scenes, negotiations for the posts were painful, right down to the last minute. On Monday, it was the influential outgoing French commissioner, Thierry Breton, who resigned forcefully, victim of his execrable relations with M.me Von der Leyen. To replace him, Emmanuel Macron had proposed a close friend, Stéphane Séjourné, the resigned foreign minister. Paris was then expecting a vice-presidency of the Commission and a large portfolio dedicated to “Industrial and technological sovereignty and European competitiveness”.
After this presentation by Ursula von der Leyen’s team, the putative commissioners will have to pass hearings before MEPs and submit to a vote of approval, an institutional confrontation with Parliament which often wants to mark its territory by rejecting certain candidates.
Several MPs are keen to oust the Hungarian candidate, who is accused of being too disinterested in the European Parliament and too close to the positions of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. As part of Hungary’s EU presidency, Orban was due to speak in Strasbourg on Wednesday, but cancelled his visit due to Storm Boris which hit Central Europe.
