EU Commission: who is still controversial and why?
Ursula von der Leyen had planned to present the new EU Commission today, but has now postponed this until next week. One reason is that Slovenia replaced its previous candidate Tomaž Vesel with Marta Kos at the last minute, a decision which still has to be approved by the parliament in Ljubljana. But apparently this isn’t the only personnel decision still under discussion.
Punishment for Meloni’s right-wing conservatives
There are also divergences regarding the appointment of the Italian Raffaele Fitto, Corriere della Sera explains:
“The expected ‘no’ vote of the Social Democrats and the Greens to a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) who voted against the EU Commission President has arrived. It complicates the election of minister Raffaele Fitto of the Fratelli d’Italia as executive vice-president. ... The announcement [of the postponement] also echoes the problems that some parties in Germany and France are having internally. ... But it also confirms how the negative repercussions of Giorgia Meloni and her ECR’s vote against the Commission were underestimated.”
Slovenia as Brussels’ plaything
Vesel’s withdrawal was one of von der Leyen’s demands, former Slovenian economy minister Matej Lahovnik explains in Slovenske novice:
“In Brussels, they apparently expect us to be obedient because we are a small country, and that they will be able to easily impose things on us. They wouldn’t dare expect this of larger states. The EU Commission president was in a quandary because the member states had sent her too many men and too few women as candidates for the new European Commission. ... Now it has also become clear what she had been up to in Slovenia in the past few days. ... What is reprehensible about all this is that gender rather than competence became the criterion for securing the post. Because let’s remember: the EU is not a federation that can dictate to us who our commissioner should be, but a union of sovereign states.”
A clever choice in the race for posts
Dnevnik also sees domestic motives for the new Slovenian candidacy:
“In his predicament, Prime Minister Robert Golob pulled Marta Kos out of his sleeve, whose candidacy his party Gibanje Svoboda had withdrawn in the 2022 presidential election campaign and who has since turned her back on the party. The swap ended happily for Golob and also for Ursula von der Leyen. He offered a competent, ambitious, hard-working, diplomatically skilled woman with a great deal of political opportunism who is thus naturally willing to answer the state’s call. ... Moreover Marta Kos will exit domestic politics for at least five years, which is a more than welcome positive side-effect for Golob.”