JOBS FOR GIRLS
For centuries, even millennia, European men have excelled in the fine art of helping a brother (or elbowing him out of the way), whether among the Freemasons, in the Vatican, or, more recently, in the College of Commissioners.
So it's nice to see women finally getting involved in this.
Avid readers of The Chatting Class (and who isn't?) may remember rumors that Annalena Baerbock, whose forced resignation as German Foreign Minister is looming, is leafing through her notorious file to land a lucrative job in international diplomacy.
New York, New York — This week, news broke that she will be president of the United Nations General Assembly, a one-year appointment with plenty of perks and prestige and little responsibility. For Baerbock, who is perhaps best known for her expertise in international law, it means moving to New York, daily talks with representatives from 193 countries, and cocktail hour on the Upper East Side.
Thank you for the Birkenstocks. It’s no surprise that Baerbock, who led her party’s 2021 campaign, announced earlier this month that she would not be leading her Green Party compatriots into the opposition trenches in the new Bundestag.
Old white woman. Now we know. What Baerbock’s actions were straight out of the Old White Man’s Handbook. When announcing her decision to step down from the Green leadership in early March, she cited the “private cost” of her tenure as foreign minister, an apparent reference to her recent divorce and the time she spent away from her young children. “That’s why I decided, for personal reasons, to step away from the bright lights,” she added.
If only. It turns out she’s been maneuvering in the background all this time to get the UN job. Germany got the job some time ago and has already chosen someone to replace her: seasoned career diplomat Helga Schmid, a former secretary general of the EU’s foreign policy service and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Schmid, the doyenne of the German diplomatic corps, has been preparing for the job for months.
“Little old lady ?” Baerbock's justification for ousting her rival was not entirely convincing. Many of her predecessors were former prime ministers and foreign ministers, she said, and Germany's decision to choose her was meant to reflect the important role of the UNGA.
An old man's indignation. “It is outrageous to replace the best and most internationally experienced German diplomat with a former one,” said Christoph Heusgen, the outgoing chairman of the Munich Security Conference.
Pot meet kettle. Heusgen, a former German ambassador to the United Nations, knows a thing or two about making it in the New York job market. After the German was appointed to the UN post in 2016, he contacted a close aide to Secretary-General António Guterres to secure a job for his wife.
“Given Germany's contribution to the UN, you might be interested in having someone on your staff (at the P5 salary level, which I understand would suit Ina) who has both: a direct connection to the Chancellery and the Foreign Minister's Office (and to the future German Ambassador to the UN, who has ambitions to sit on the Security Council in 2019/2020),” Heusgen wrote at the time. For some reason, his wife Ina got the job.
Croatian Law
We should all be so lucky to have an EU pension. Work for a few years – 10 to be precise – in the Commission or some random EU agency and go to the beach.
Croatia, for example, has beautiful beaches. Just ask Maja Markovcic Kostelac, executive director of the Lisbon-based European Maritime Safety Agency. EMSA is a so-called “decentralized” EU agency, meaning it’s semi-independent, but not really because we all end up paying for it.
Article 43. The EU reviews maritime safety regulations from time to time, a process that is currently taking place in a trilogue mode. There is nothing strange about this. But several diplomats involved in the process were surprised to see Croatia lobbying for a specific paragraph (Article 43, paragraph 2), in which the European Commission proposed to extend the term of office of the EMSA executive director, i.e. Kostelac.
5+5. Currently, this is a five-year mandate, renewable for another four years. The Commission is proposing to change it to “5+5 years.” The reason? After ten years, the official will be entitled to a generous EU pension.
Kostelac was appointed by the agency's governing board for her first mandate in 2019. The EU spokesman said the Commission had proposed an extension of her mandate for another four years at its meeting on 26 April 2023, which was accepted by the Council. The then Transport Commissioner, Adina-Ioana Vălean, submitted the proposal to the College for adoption.
However, Euractiv has learned that the initial proposal to the Board of Directors to extend her mandate came from another Croatian, Maja Bakran Marcic, Deputy Director General of the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE).
Taking a closer look at the Commission's proposed regulatory reform, we also noticed that the executive wants to ensure that the 5+5 mandate applies retrospectively, and not just in the future:
“If a decision is made to extend the powers of the executive director […] before this Regulation comes into force, the term of extension of powers shall be five years. The remaining terms of her contract shall remain unchanged.”
In other words, the Commission wants to apply the “5+5” years retroactively to cover Markovčič's current mandate. Normally, the revised provision applies for the next mandate.
An EU official told Euractiv that the most common length of mandate for the executive director of a decentralised agency is 5+5 years, with “more than 70% of decentralised agencies following this approach.”
Euractiv has double-checked and indeed, the mandates of most EU decentralised agencies have been extended for another five years.
However, this is not the case in EMSA, and this is not what was agreed for Kostelac in 2023. The fact that diplomats and Commission staff from Croatia are lobbying to change 5+5 retroactively, thereby granting Kostelac pension rights, creates what is known in EU parlance as “interesting optics”.
THE FOURTH ESTATE
Politico, Axel Springer and Gaza
Best laid plans. So we spent the week minding our own business, other business, deciding not to write about a certain red American competitor any more… Alas, some people just can't stay out of the headlines.
Like so many other spats these days, this one started with X. Martin Varsavsky, an Argentine entrepreneur and board member of Axel Springer, took issue with a Politico article headlined “Israel Launches New Airstrikes in Gaza, Killing At Least 200.” The article was accompanied by a photograph of a man holding what the caption claimed was a dead child.
“Bad journalism”? Varsavsky believes the Politico story, which originated with the AP, was biased. “I want to publicly state that I consider this Politico article to be support for the terrorist organization Hamas and bad journalism,” he wrote in Spanish. A common frustration in Israel, shared by Varsavsky, is that the Palestinian death toll figures cited in Western media come from Hamas and are unverifiable.
While Politico didn't write that specific story (the AP did), it included the news (with an even higher estimated death toll) in its Washington Playbook morning newsletter.
Politico's coverage of the conflict has often frustrated executives at Springer , a staunchly pro-Israel publisher that even flies the country's flag outside its headquarters. Internal critics say the outlet often goes out of its way to paint Israel in a negative light, as in this January story.
The row reflects the extent to which Politico, as we’ve previously pointed out , is not in tune with Springer’s conservative ethos. The frustration expressed by Varsavsky, who is close to both Springer CEO Matthias Döpfner and Elon Musk, was surprising only for its public nature. In a now-deleted post, he said “most journalists are wide awake and to the left of the general public” and offered to intervene.
It may be too late. As of late Saturday, Varsavsky was no longer listed on Axel Springer's website as a member of the board of directors he joined in 2014. Stay tuned.
Special thanks to our tipsters and our Scottish headline writer.
That's all for this week. Remember: send your tips to [email protected].
Servus!
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