Spain’s green Socialist gets top European Commission role as leader sets out plans
Spain’s outspoken Socialist deputy prime minister will take charge of Europe’s “clean transition”, it emerged yesterday, as Ursula von der Leyen outlined the choices for her team of 26 top officials.
Teresa Ribera is set to become one of six executive vice-presidents to take on powerful roles in the incoming European Commission, which is expected to start work at the end of the year.
The French president Emmanuel Macron’s close ally Stéphane Séjourné, another vice-president pick, gets a portfolio in charge of industrial policy, while the Italian farright leader Giorgia Meloni’s choice, Raffaele Fitto, will oversee funding for Europe’s poorer regions.
After weeks of wrangling with national capitals, the final list was a careful balancing act of geography, party affiliation and gender.
It was also a show of strength by von der Leyen, the first woman to lead the commission, who strongarmed some governments into providing female candidates. She oversaw the departure of some of her sternest critics, including France’s
Thierry Breton, who was expected to serve a second-term in Brussels until his shock resignation on Monday, when he criticised “questionable governance” at the commission.
Ribera, a veteran advocate of climate action, has been tasked with leading the EU’s “clean industrial deal” to promote green companies which von der Leyen promised to publish in the first 100 days of her next mandate. Ribera, von der Leyen said, would “make sure Europe remains on track” in its transition to climate neutrality.
The climate emergency “is the major backdrop of all we are doing” said von der Leyen, adding that security and Europe’s competitiveness had also emerged as dominant themes in setting the priorities for her incoming commission.
The decision to award Fitto a vicepresidential post is already proving controversial in the European parliament, however, especially among Green and Socialist MEPs whose support was crucial to von der Leyen’s successful reelection in July.
Defending the move, the commission president noted that two of the
European parliament’s 14 vice-presidents came from Fitto’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) faction. “Italy is a very important country and one of our founding members and this also has to reflect in the choice,” she said. It was perhaps a tacit admission that while all member states are equal under the EU treaties, some carry more weight than others.
The co-leader of the Green group Terry Reintke said Fitto’s nomination was “a big concern” and “could endanger the pro-democratic majority in the European parliament”.
The former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi last week warned that Europe needed an €800bn spending boost and deep-rooted reforms to avert a “slow and agonising decline”.
Four of the six VP nominees are women, while the overall team of EU commissioners is 40% female. While this falls short of von der Leyen’s aim of achieving gender-balance, it is an improvement on a few weeks ago.
Speaking in Strasbourg, Von der Leyen said she had been on track for 22% women and 78% men, which was “completely unacceptable, so I worked intensively with the member states and we were able to improve the share”.
Each EU member state sends a commissioner to Brussels, who is meant to represent the common European interest, rather than national positions. All candidates will be questioned in the European parliament in hearings expected to take place next month.
MEPs typically reject two or three commissioners before voting on whether to approve the entire commission. Hungary’s nominee, Olivér Várhelyi, who has been criticised for prioritising Budapest’s agenda during his first term, is seen as especially vulnerable.
EU officials expect the new commission to take office on 1 December.