What the new European Commission will look like

what the new european commission will look like The new European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, has made public her team of commissioners for the next five years

Soon the executive team led by Jean-Claude Juncker will leave the European Commission, to make room for the new European cabinet. Its president elect, Ursula von der Leyen, has already presented in Brussels the list of commissioners and the structure of the new Commission. Ursula von der Leyen promised to adopt new measures against climate change, to consolidate the partnership with the United States and redefine relations with China. Mrs. Von der Leyen claims her team will be balanced, agile and modern, devoted to sustainable policies and a champion of multilateralism. 


Since Great Britain has made no nomination, the new Commission will have 27 members, of whom 8 vice-presidents, including the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell of Spain. The central policies of the new Commission will be coordinated over the next five years by executive vice-presidents, as follows: Social-Democrat Frans Timmermans of the Netherlands will be in charge of fighting climate change, Denmark's Liberal Margrethe Vestager will be in charge of digital competitiveness, while Latvian Democrat Valdis Dombrovskis will take over the social and business sector. The media writes that keeping Vestager at the helm of the fight against the Silicon Valley-based US companies' monopoly of European markets will most likely attract criticism from the White House. 


The appointment of Romanian MEP Rovana Plumb as Commissioner for Transport was met with equal criticism in Bucharest. A member of the Social-Democratic Party for the last 25 years, Plumb has held repeated terms at the helm of the Environment, Labor, European Funds, Education and Transport Ministries. The opposition says Rovana Plumb's integrity and set of skills make her utterly unfit for the job. In turn she claims the opposition has done little for the country. Political pundits find it ironical that Plumb should be appointed Transport Commissioner, considering Romania has been struggling to build a motorway network and has reported little improvement in decades in terms of modernizing its rail network. 


Controversies revolve around the other members of the new Commission as well. A case in point is that of Sylvie Goulard of France, nominated for the position of Commissioner for the Internal Market, the very day she was deposed by the French judicial police in a case involving fictional jobs. A considerable amount of uproar was caused by von der Leyen's decision to make migration part of a wider portfolio dubbed "protecting our European way of life", a label the left-wing Greens have found "frightening". According to procedures, the designated Commissioners will appear before the relevant Parliament committees, with Parliament expected to cast its final vote afterwards. Once the Commission is approved by Parliament, the European Council will formally appoint the European Commission.

(Translated by V. Palcu)



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Publicat: 2019-09-11 13:50:00
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