BRUSSELS — European Union leaders this week agreed with surprising speed on a trio of top jobselecting the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for a second term, the Portuguese António Costa as president of the European Council and the Estonian Kaja Kallas as its top diplomat.
Compared to the heated fight to name the EU’s top team in 2019, all three candidates appeared strong ahead of a crucial summit on Thursday, having received praise from leaders of different political and geographical backgrounds in preparatory talks in recent weeks. .
While the jobs package was rejected in whole or in part by the two most powerful politicians of Europe’s far right, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán, Thursday night’s talks wrapped with unusual speed.
The feeling in Brussels was that with war at the gates of Europe in Ukraine and the US elections in November that could mark the beginning of the return of the former president donald trumpThere was no time to lose.
It was a very different situation from five years ago, when the unexpected nomination of the German conservative von der Leyen caused a stir in the European Parliament due to her lack of qualifications for the most powerful position in EU politics.
Once installed as head of the EU executive, she silenced many critics. Von der Leyen oversaw a massive campaign to buy COVID-19 vaccines, launched a huge post-pandemic economic restart fund, set the EU’s most ambitious climate goals to date, and raised tens of billions of euros in military and financial aid for kyiv to defend from Russia. . The murky nature of the vaccine deal negotiations and his presidential style, among other things, have been weaker points.
Kallas, who was previously in line for NATO’s top post, won over early skeptics with his strident line on Russia. The choice of the 47-year-old prime minister immediately drew Moscow’s ire. On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described her as “rabidly Russophobic,” Russian news agency Interfax reported. Kallas, one of kyiv’s closest supporters, was added to a Russian wanted list earlier this year.
Costa, meanwhile, quelled concerns about a corruption investigation in his government that forced him to resign as prime minister last year. He denies any wrongdoing and has not been charged over the matter. Costa, 62, is known as a shrewd political negotiator in Portugal, but the smell of scandal may linger. As president of the European Council, his job will be to negotiate agreements between the leaders of the 27 member states.
While Costa is confirmed to take over from current Council President Charles Michel on December 1, von der Leyen and Kallas have not stepped over the line. They face a grilling in the newly formed European Parliament, which will meet for the first time in mid-July and must win the support of a simple majority of 361 lawmakers.
The EU’s only directly elected body lurched to the right in the elections from June 6 to 9although the three main political families maintained a narrow working majority that allowed them to impose their elections for the highest positions.
Von der Leyen comes from the largest group, the traditional and conservative European People’s Party (EPP). Costa comes from the second largest group, the center-left Socialists and Democrats. Both groups did well in the elections, unlike Kallas’ pro-business liberal Renew. He fell from third to fourth place, overtaken by the right-wing European nationalists of Meloni and the Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
The three centrist groups have almost 400 of the 720 members between them, which is good news for von der Leyen and Kallas. But political families are porous and undisciplined. Some members of von der Leyen’s own EPP have already declared that they will not vote for her. Last time, the former German defense minister managed to pass with a margin of nine votes.
To compensate for possible defections, von der Leyen can seek support on the left, especially in the significantly weakened Greens, or on the right, in Meloni’s ECR. But none of the options are simple. Working with the environmental group may make her unpopular among her own PPE. Some members are unhappy with von der Leyen’s signature climate policies. The centre-left, liberals and greens have also warned her that cooperating with the far right, whether the ECR or the even more extreme group Identity and Democracy, is impossible if she wants their support.
In the run-up to the election, von der Leyen courted Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has neofascist rootsbut after the strong performance of the EPP and his own German Christian Democrats, he declared that the political center would serve as a “bastion against the extremes of left and right.”
On Tuesday, von der Leyen will meet with the leaders of the political groups and must convince them with the general lines of the political program of her new commission until 2029. The date of the confirmation vote is not yet confirmed.
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