The new Commission line-up – effectively the EU’s government ministers – has won applause in eastern parts of the Union, where a crop of hefty job titles in Brussels for politicians from Tallinn to Bucharest looks like an overdue transfer of power toward Europe’s once communist-run “new” member states.
The reality is fuzzier, but it does reflect some shift in influence over strategies that will determine Europeans’ prosperity and security well into the future.
As a student of politics many years ago, I was initiated into a popular pastime of the age. Learning “Kremlinology”, we pored over photographs of Red Square parades to see who stood close to the party leader and sifted through Pravda for titles and honours awarded to Politburo loyalists. It may surprise citizens of Europe’s fairly transparent democracies that such esoteric pursuits are alive and well today in Brussels’ EU quarter.
Last week, Von der Leyen, a German politician beginning a second five years in charge, listed the jobs she proposed for her 26 colleagues, one sent by each member state. The commentariat whirred into action. Many felt that eastern countries who have joined the EU over the past 20 years had done well. The number two spot goes to Kaja Kallas from Estonia, who becomes effectively Europe’s foreign minister. In a new role running the EU’s fast-developing common defence policy is a fellow Baltic former prime minister, Lithuania’s Andrius Kubilius.
Twenty years after a French president betrayed the depth of western condescension toward eastern EU leaders on geopolitics by telling them they had “missed a golden opportunity to shut up”, Europeans warier of strongmen in Moscow (or in Beijing) now have more say on Europe’s global role in a hostile world.
Titles aren’t everything, though. For Kremlinology fans, there was fun to be had, too, in studying a hastily released “family photo” of Von der Leyen surrounded by her new team. Call it coincidence, of course, but looming over her shoulders are two familiar faces. Former Latvian prime minister Valdis Dombrovskis and Slovakia’s Maroš Šefčovič have – technically – been demoted.
But their combined 25 years’ experience on the Commission gives them the nous and networks to make the most of new jobs running key economic and trade portfolios. Also peering out from behind Von der Leyen’s more grandly titled vice presidents is Piotr Serafin. Little known outside Brussels, Serafin was Donald Tusk’s right-hand man during the Polish premier’s time chairing summits of EU leaders up to 2019; as budget commissioner, he will have his hands on the money in vital upcoming negotiations on funding EU investments in technology and security.
Of six vice presidents, two – Kallas and Romania’s Roxana Mînzatu – are from the east. Being a step up in rank over other commissioners may not confer power, however. Von der Leyen argues that her complex hierarchy will help coordinate responses to what she identifies as Europe’s big problems – climate change, security threats from Russia and elsewhere, and an economy that generates less wealth than an unpredictable United States and unfriendly China. For critics, the complex web of the new Commission means Von der Leyen – and, by extension, Germany – can keep pulling the strings.
Yet where real power lies in the Commission’s Berlaymont building is always hard to pin down. Commissioners may be sent by their governments but, once there, they’re supposed to “leave their passports at the door”. Some do, some don’t. Once appointed, they can’t be fired by national rivals. And, like ministers everywhere, commissioners come and go while career civil servants steer policy for decades. Among these, while again nationality is not meant to influence their decisions, the 11 ex-communist EU states are still badly under-represented at the top, accounting for nearly a quarter of the EU population but barely one in 20 of the Commission’s thousand senior managers.
As will be clear next week, when members of the European Parliament start grilling new commissioners before voting on whether to accept them, Brussels’ power dynamics are not confined to the inside of the Commission.
Von der Leyen may be described as the EU’s prime minister, but – despite efforts by directly elected EU lawmakers to change the system – she was not elected but appointed after closed-door negotiations among the 27 national leaders who sit on the European Council. It is they, ultimately, who have the power to drive Europe forward on a common course – or pull it apart. Nationalist, anti-EU forces have dragged Britain out, taken power in Italy and are piling pressure on the other governments of Europe’s traditional Big Four powers, France and Germany.
That may leave space for ambitious eastern commissioners and Council leaders, with an appreciation of European democracy that is fuelled by painful personal memory, to nudge the Union towards to the deeper cooperation, heavier investment and more assertive geopolitical manners that may stave off decline. Nonetheless, 40 years ago, Kremlinologists peering at new faces on Red Square thought they saw the future of the Soviet Union – and failed to see it had no future. As we pore over the details of who gets what job in Brussels today and what passport is in their pocket, we would do well to consider that this is no time for the European Union to lose sight of the big picture.
