The European Parliament is preparing to approve on Wednesday in Strasbourg the new team of the European Commission, which wants to quickly put itself in battle order against a backdrop of severe economic and geopolitical turbulence.
“Our freedom and our sovereignty depend more than ever on our economic power”, launched, a few hours before the vote, its president Ursula von der Leyen who promised that her first “major initiative” would focus on competitiveness.
A little later, she insisted on European Defense and the need to do more to compete with Russian military spending, in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
“Our expenses must increase,” she insisted. “Russia spends up to 9% of its GDP on defense. Europe spends on average 1.9%. There is something wrong with this equation,” she insisted.
The new European executive must take office at the beginning of December, around fifty days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. And a sense of urgency prevails.
Between the billionaire's return to Washington, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the trade battle with China, “the environment has changed radically” compared to 2019, underlines the Swede Ylva Johansson, who will leave her position as president. European Commissioner for Immigration.
New EU executive faces 'more threats' But “the Commission is much more operational than five years ago”, she assures, highlighting the European response during the Covid-19 crisis or the mobilization in the face of the war in Ukraine.
Preparing for Mr. Trump's return is “the most urgent challenge” of Ursula von der Leyen's second term, says Luigi Scazzieri, analyst at the Center for European Reform. On “two fronts”: trade with the Republican president-elect's promise to increase customs duties on European products and “security” with the risk of disengagement of the United States in Ukraine.
Despite these challenges, the European Parliament will have struggled before approving the new Commission.
The groups clashed over the vice-presidency granted to the Italian Raffaele Fitto (Territorial Cohesion), member of Giorgia Meloni's far-right Fratelli d'Italia party, while the left demanded the maintenance of a “cordon health”.
Von der Leyen assumed this vice-presidency, which allows him to maintain his relations with Ms. Meloni. “It’s a choice that I made,” she told MEPs.
After several days of standoff, the EPP (right), the centrists of Renew and the social democrats ended up painfully sealing an agreement to approve all of the proposed commissioners, a first in twenty years.
Among the new faces, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas becomes the new head of EU diplomacy, French centrist Stéphane Séjourné gets a vice-presidency with a broad portfolio on industrial strategy and Spanish socialist Teresa Ribera will be vice-president for ecological transition and competition.
– “Need for stability” –
This new Commission leans to the right with around fifteen portfolios, out of 27, allocated to the EPP (right), the main political force in Parliament.
EPP leader Manfred Weber did not hide his satisfaction. It is a “very balanced” Commission, he launched, mentioning a possible parliamentary majority ranging from ECR (extreme right), where the Italian MEPs of Giorgia Meloni sit, to certain Greens.
In passing, the German official once again brushed off the left's accusations of its ambiguities with the far right.
“There are red lines” and no cooperation possible with those who are not “pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine and pro-rule of law”, he reaffirmed, distinguishing between the troops of Giorgia Meloni and the two other far-right groups.
At the head of the Social Democrats, the Spaniard Iratxe Garcia-Pérez highlighted the “need for stability” in Europe to explain her support for the new team.
But the granting of a vice-presidency to Raffaele Fitto continues to divide the group, and defections are expected during the vote of MEPs.
“We are crossing a red line, and we will never go back in the opposite direction, so it will not be with us,” squeaked Frenchman Raphaël Glucksmann. “We should have a combat commission, capable of defending the general European interest, and I do not believe that Fratelli d’Italia is on that line.”
Same divergence among environmentalists. “The designation of a far-right vice-president creates a tragic precedent which opens the way to the worst,” denounced Frenchwoman Marie Toussaint. “Europe goes backwards every time the far right advances.”
