Want an EU top job? Have you asked the prosecutor?

BRUSSELS — When EU leaders sit down on Monday to discuss who will take the EU’s top jobs, two of the people under consideration will be facing legal probes.

As POLITICO reported, the preferred names to sit at the EU’s top table are Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as European Commission president, Portugal’s António Costa as European Council president, Malta’s Roberta Metsola as the European Parliament boss, and Estonia’s Kaja Kallas as foreign policy chief. 

The parameters of how to assign leaders to these posts take into consideration geographic diversity (i.e. Baltics vs Western Europe vs Southern Europe, for example), gender balance and political affiliation.

What there are no clear-cut guidelines for, though, are the legal problems of potential candidates.

As it happens, the frontrunners for both the European Council and European Commission share one striking similarity: They are both the subject of ongoing investigations.

Of course, being a high-ranking politician can make you a target. Jean-Claude Juncker served his term as Commission president despite coming under pressure over the tax breaks companies received while he was president of Luxembourg — with probes launched into whether a 2003 tax ruling in Juncker-run Luxembourg was so generous to Amazon as to amount to illegal state aid.

Since then, the Qatargate cash-for-influence scandal has raised the bar in Brussels, and in the wake of European Parliament elections in which far-right groups made major advances by campaigning against the rot within Europe’s mainstream parties, judicial baggage could be a problem.

Here’s a look at the probes being conducted into von der Leyen and Costa.

Ursula von der Leyen

Von der Leyen is still not in the clear over Pfizergate — a scandal over her failure to disclose exchanges with the CEO of the pharmaceutical company.

The problems of the Commission president, known by the three-letter acronym VDL, go back to another three-letter acronym: SMS.

Ever since her time at the German defense ministry, von der Leyen has run into trouble over her use of text messages. 

Before von der Leyen was sent to Brussels, her defense ministry in Germany was facing a Bundestag investigation for irregularities in contracts awarded to consultancies — but when lawmakers requested to see her work phones as part of an inquiry into those contracts, it was revealed that the phones had been wiped.

Both frontrunners are the subject of ongoing investigations. | Pool photo by Urs Flueeler via AFP/Getty Images

Her more recent scandal broke when the New York Times reported that von der Leyen had exchanged text messages with Pfizer boss Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s biggest vaccine deal at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The newspaper sued the Commission over its refusal to release those messages at the Court of Justice of the EU.

Investigators from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office have in recent months taken over a probe stemming from a separate lawsuit against von der Leyen by Frédéric Baldan, according to legal documents seen by POLITICO and a spokesperson from the Liège prosecutor’s office. 

Baldan, a Belgian lobbyist for Chinese companies, sued the Commission president, accusing her of “interference in public functions, destruction of SMS, corruption and conflict of interest” — a hearing in that case was postponed to December. 

António Costa

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Costa is the clear frontrunner for the top post at the European Council, but there are some in Brussels who are skeptical that he’s the best man for the job.

While Costa is well-liked by the EU’s heads of state and government and has a proven track record as a skilled negotiator — the kind that is needed to unblock complex Council discussions — he remains the subject of an ongoing legal probe back home.

Costa has not been formally charged with any crime, but remains under investigation as part of the far-reaching influence-peddling probe that prompted his resignation last November.

Prosecutors have not dropped the investigation into Costa. | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images

Prosecutors allege that members of Costa’s government tailored legislation to benefit the backers of a state-of-the-art data center in Sines, in southern Portugal. The then-prime minister’s name was mentioned by suspects in several wiretaps, prompting prosecutors to look into what he may have known about the scheme.

The details of the investigation into Costa remain classified; he denies any wrongdoing.

His supporters in Lisbon and the EU bubble insist that the case against him is weak, and say the fact that Portuguese prosecutors have not charged him with any crime shows that they lack the evidence to do so.

But prosecutors have also not dropped the investigation into Costa, and the Portuguese candidate’s opponents say it would be a bad look for someone with legal woes to end up in one of the EU’s most prestigious posts. That framing may be used by Nordic countries seeking to boost the candidacy of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who is considered to be more aligned with their positions on defense and migration.

Stuart Lau contributed to this article.