The European Commission hopefuls with one thing on their mind

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BRUSSELS ― It’s as if the European Commission is a trendy nightclub with a long line of eager party animals desperate to be admitted.

Only a handful will get the chance to strut their stuff the way they crave. And that means a place in the Commission for the next five years with a plumb job. This time around, many European Union governments define that as one connected to the economy in some way.

And though they can flutter their eyelids at the steely-eyed bouncer ― Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ― all they like, they won’t all get what they want.

“The industrial policy and the budget portfolios are the important ones now,” said Guntram Wolff, an economist and senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank. On top of that, there are opportunities in charge of regional spending, financial regulation and national spending control.

Von der Leyen has set an Aug. 30 deadline to accept all the candidatures. She will interview them, try to solve the puzzle and distribute the seats ― pleasing those she wants to please and spurning those who faces don’t fit. Many factors, not just individual skill sets, will be taken into account: for example, ensuring all four corners of the EU are represented in the most-coveted jobs.

All governments get one representative on the Commission. Here, POLITICO takes a look at the men ― and they are, almost exclusively, men, and mostly over the age of 50 ― who are peacocking before their potential new boss in the hope of an economic role.

The sportsman

If managing a powerful economic portfolio requires the steady hand and competitive instinct of a tennis player, then Austria’s nominee would be the perfect choice.

Magnus Brunner, 52, finance minister in Vienna since December 2021 and from the same political family as von der Leyen, is an “excellent tennis player,” said Reinhold Lopatka, the head of the Austrian delegation of the European People’s Party at the European Parliament.

He has known Brunner for more than 20 years and once lost out to him as they vied for presidency of … the Austrian Tennis Federation.

Brunner is one of the few runners for these roles who has experience both in the private and public sectors. He worked for an energy firm, and served his party doing “lobbying work for entrepreneurs,” according to Lopatka.

Brunner comes from the most westerly Austrian region, the country’s tail bordering highly business-dense Bavaria in Germany, and Switzerland. He’s from an entrepreneurial family. In an Austrian landscape marked by widespread embracing of the idea that state intervention should be limited, Brunner’s record as minister in times of inflation and energy crisis went in the opposite direction.

“People who see him positively say he was a strong crisis manager, the people who see him negatively say he spent too much money” — giving subsidies to everyone “even those who didn’t really need this support,” said Lopatka, “trying to be objective.”

The gardener

Slovenia’s liberal government has made it clear it wants an economic, financial, and competitiveness-related portfolio. Its nominee, Tomaž Vesel, 56, is the former president of the country’s court of auditors, an expert in public procurement and budget administration.

He served as chair of the independent audit at FIFA, football’s governing body, when Gianni Infantino, its president, faced corruption allegations.

He was “the guy who came after to correct the mess,” said a person close to the Slovenian government who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity because of the behind-the-scenes nature of the discussion. Still, Vesel attracted criticism because he didn’t leave his top-level civil servant job in Slovenia.

He also had a complicated relationship with the former center-right government of Janez Janša because he “spoke out” when it “made many, many attempts to undermine the constitutional order,” the person said ― and also during the first phases of the pandemic when countries tried to be fast in procuring ventilators and masks.

Vesel knows accounting rules, and he also has green fingers ― and a garden with more than 200 plants listed, and even a small football field.

The money man

Raffaele Fitto, 54, was tasked by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to handle the huge amount of money the country received through Next Generation EU ― the bloc’s post-Covid recovery fund. Now he’d like to control European funds more broadly.

His results at home are mixed. Italy’s finance ministry calculated that less than €50 billion out of around €192 billion has been spent by the beginning of July. The Commission called for acceleration. As his move to Brussels came into view, Fitto started trying to ease conflict between Meloni’s government and the Commission.

You can read a full profile of Fitto here.

The smooth insider

Poland’s nominated commissioner, Piotr Serafin, 50, is a close ally of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and has been eyeing the budget portfolio, according to Polish media reports.

Serafin is the classic Brussels insider, having been Tusk’s right-hand man for half a decade from 2014. Tusk was European Council president during a period when the bloc was confronted with unprecedented challenges ― the culmination of the Greek debt crisis, a surge in migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia and Brexit.

Known as a smooth operator with fellow diplomats and the media, Serafin could be Poland’s secret weapon if it wants to wield more power in Brussels. The budget role will be one of the most influential because it’s about real money: how much governments have to contribute to the EU, and how much they will get back.

Mr. No

Wopke Hoekstra, 48, was finance minister before becoming a commissioner last October when Franz Timmermans decided to run in the Dutch election. He had gained a nickname along the lines of “Mr. No” due to his habit of not listening to colleagues’ calls for new funds.

He can claim to have delivered well-shaped budgets and channeled the Dutch national surplus into investments.

But on the European stage, his support for budgetary rigor ― a country that does not respect the bloc’s spending rules should not receive EU funds, he said once ― earned him a mixed reputation, especially when he went out on a limb to reject pooled sharing of EU debt for tackling the pandemic crisis. Later, he said, he regretted that.

He also said he regretted investments he made through a tax haven. In his first hearing in front of the European Parliament for his role as climate action commissioner, EU lawmakers — especially those from his country — also grilled him for his past work experience at Shell and McKinsey.

The family man

Ireland has made it known that former Finance Minister Michael McGrath, 47, wants an economic portfolio too. What’s tricky is that Ireland held the financial services portfolio in the outgoing commission, making a repeat a difficult sell.

In Ireland, McGrath set up a sovereignty fund fueled by corporate taxes to tackle the current and future demographic and green transition challenges.

If he’s searching for an in with von der Leyen, they might be able to bond over the fact they both have seven children.

The banker

Jozef Síkela, 57, is the Czech industry and trade minister, and would prefer an internal market or competition portfolio.

Its government sees the climate and trade job as interesting too, according to a Czech government official.

But “his whole life, his whole career, he has been working in the banking sector,” the official said, citing his long experience at the Erste Group Bank AG as a corporate and investment banker.

The outsiders

Other names may pop up over the next few weeks.

Maria Luís Albuquerque, a former Portuguese finance minister who handled the country’s bank crisis, is the second option for Lisbon.

Denmark could send its industry minister, Morten Bødskov. Sweden’s Jessika Roswall pitched competitiveness in her presentation speech and Belgium’s Didier Reynders may be keen on an economic brief. A lot of southern and eastern countries are looking at the cohesion (regional spending) post.

Much will depend on how von der Leyen shapes the jobs.

Some long-serving commissioners are here to stay — like Latvian Valdis Dombrovskis, most recently serving as economy czar, along with Slovak Maroš Šefčovič. Šefčovič this time would like “an economic portfolio, dealing with industry or competition or energy,” a government official said.

Others such as Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, are searching for a big promotion. Even if his relationship with his boss has been difficult, Breton seems convinced he has gained the right to a top-level role.

Building the structure

The idea of having vice presidents who stand above a number of commissioners ― as has been the case under von der Leyen’s first term ― can help control the group. But that’s not been to everyone’s liking.

It “has not really worked very well,” Bruegel’s Wolff said, recalling meetings of economy ministers where Dombrovskis and Italian Paolo Gentiloni, the economy commissioner, were “coming up with different messages, and weakening the position of the Commission.”

One idea circulating is to merge the budget and cohesion portfolios. Another is to carve out the many directorate-generals that were under the control of Margrethe Vestager, the competition chief.

Von der Leyen is trying to avoid having people who do not control a department, an official said, adding that not controlling it means “you don’t have the means, the staff to actually do something meaningful.”

“The internal structure of the Commission needs to be reformed,” the official said. “It needs to keep up with the reality out there, and this was not the case so far.”

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