Agreement Reached on von der Leyen and Top EU Jobs (2024)

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EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (center) with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (left) and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Copyright: European Union

The leaders of the mainstream European parties reached a deal about the top EU positions for the next five years on Tuesday night, June 25th, two days before the official negotiations would resume between all 27 member states in Brussels. The majority of the EU leaders were left out of the discussions and will be presented with the outcome as a fact. Similarly, European voters have once again been ignored in the grand scheme of European democracy.

‘Business as Usual’

According to reports, the negotiation involved only six EU leaders: the Polish and Greek prime ministers Tusk and Mitsotakis representing the centrist European People’s Party (EPP); German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Spanish counterpart Pedró Sánchez from the social democrats (S&D); and French President Emmanuel Macron and (the caretaker) Dutch PM Mark Rutte from the liberal Renew Europe.

This means that despite the heavy right-wing shift during the elections, the shots are still being called by the center-left ‘Ursula coalition’ (EPP, S&D, Renew), whose five-year governance has been significantly challenged—if not utterly rejected—by the European voters.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni—whose European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group is now the third largest in the Parliament and ahead of the humiliated French president’s liberal Renew—was not included in the talks and was only called afterwards told about the deal.

The final roster is technically the same as was pitched when they tried to reach a consensus for the first time during last week’s summit, the only difference being that the EPP withdrew its demand to reserve the second half of the European Council presidency for itself.

Therefore, the EPP’s Ursula von der Leyen and Roberta Metsola will continue to serve as the presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament, respectively; the European Council (EUCO) presidency goes to Portugal’s socialist ex-PM, António Costa; and the bloc’s top diplomat—the EU’s foreign affairs high representative—will be Estonia’s liberal prime minister, Kaja Kallas.

In other words, this electoral cycle once again underlines the serious democratic deficiencies of the European Union, as leaders and factions who fail at the ballots still get to put unelected bureaucrats in charge of 450 million people.

Moreover, two of the three top jobs that need the Council’s nomination will be given to politicians entangled in major corruption scandals and under pending investigations. Von der Leyen’s court hearing about Pfizergate—potentially the biggest conflict of interest case in European history—has been conveniently postponed until December; while Costa’s socialist cabinet collapsed less than a year ago under the weight of one of the biggest-ever Portuguese corruption scandals.

Similarly ironic is that the EU’s chief diplomat will be a woman who was considered a ‘loose cannon’—too hawkishly anti-Russia—to be given charge of NATO, her original bid earlier this year. At a time when European voters gave unprecedented power to parties that advocate for restraint and de-escalation in the war in Ukraine (such as the French National Rally), the ‘democratic’ outcome of the election is the exact opposite again.

The Meloni question

According to Italian media reports, Mitsotakis called Meloni on Wednesday morning to ask for her support despite leaving her out of the talks, as her 24 conservative MEPs might be crucial to put von der Leyen and the others through the required threshold in the Parliament. As a reminder, the same ‘Ursula coalition’ had a much wider majority in 2019, yet only a 9-vote margin confirmed von der Leyen, so it may very well fall into the hands of the Italians to decide the fate of this deal in a few years.

Naturally, supporting von der Leyen has its price, especially after Meloni was practically excluded from the top jobs reshuffle despite being the only major EU leader whose position was reaffirmed by the voters. Macron and Scholz were both crushed at the ballots, yet it was they who decided who would write the next chapter of Europe’s future.

Meloni will not be satisfied with anything less than an executive Commission vice-president post combined with an influential portfolio for her candidate, Italy’s current EU affairs minister, Raffaele Fitto. She is also expected to seek guarantees about certain policies, especially in relation to agriculture and the Green Deal, as well as that Kallas will not neglect the EU’s southern neighborhood while focusing only on Russia.

Furthermore, ECR, the third largest group, would need to have at least two vice-presidencies (instead of the current one) in the EU Parliament’s 14-member Bureau, which is usually carved up by the victorious coalition.

Whether Meloni will get what she wants is yet to be seen during Thursday and Friday’s EUCO summit, when the remaining 20 leaders will also need to be persuaded to back the deal. However, von der Leyen only needs a qualified majority to be nominated, meaning just over half of the member states representing 65% of the EU’s population, and the six countries involved in rubberstamping the deal already account for roughly 60%.

• Tags:António Costa, Kaja Kallas, Tamás Orbán, Ursula von der Leyen