The departure of Margrethe Vestager, one of the European Commission’s heavyweights, could trigger a chain reaction and an early reshuffle less than a year from the finish line.
As the Commission’s mandates draw to a close, it is natural that politicians start planning their next move. Except this time around, the game has started earlier than usual.
Margrethe Vestager is leaving her post as the chief of Europe’s competition department, closing a decade in which she made global headlines for high-profile cases taking on Big Tech and the world’s wealthiest companies.
Vestager has made her bid as Denmark’s candidate for the president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), which manages assets worth hundreds of billions of euros.
But when the EIB’s Board of Directors adopts the official list of nominees for its top job in August, Vestager will have to officially step down from her functions and go on unpaid leave. The power vacuum to fill in is enormous, and the prize is too high to be ignored.
Filling the vacuum
The crown jewel of Vestager’s current portfolio is, without any doubt, the Directorate General for Competition Policy (DG COMP), and Johannes Hahn, the Austrian Commissioner currently in charge of budgetary and HR matters, has been widely touted to take over control of it, according to three sources informed on the matter.
Hahn is in his second mandate, and by keeping tight control over the EU’s budget, he has won the sympathies of the so-called ‘frugal’ countries.
Another viable name for the ‘frugals’ is Valdis Dombrovskis. However, he is already in charge of trade affairs, the other major exclusive competence of the bloc besides competition policy.
Meanwhile, Thierry Breton, the Commissioner for the Internal Market, is said to be sitting this one out.
While Breton has been eyeing the competition portfolio for the next mandate, pushing the view of allowing large European companies to consolidate to compete globally, his call for European champions makes him the nightmare of the so-called ‘friends of the single market’, a camp that largely overlaps with the frugal member states from Northern and Central-Eastern Europe.
It would be hard to imagine the Commission halting mergers such as Siemens-Alstom with Breton in the driving seat. Besides EU countries, though, the Frenchman’s approach toward market consolidation might be hard to swallow for many key people in the EU competition department who spent a good chunk of their careers pedalling in the opposite direction.
Another option might be not to replace Vestager and leave the position of competition chief vacant, which would mean placing even more powers in the hands of current Director General, Olivier Guersent, who would de facto become the Competition Commissioner.
What will happen to Vestager’s cabinet is another question. While she is on leave, the cabinet members will continue to advise the caretaker, while it will be formally dissolved if she steps down. In practice, most members – especially the most experienced – are likely to stay.
“It would be crazy to remove an entire cabinet, especially for DG COMP,” an EU official told EURACTIV.
Several high-profile competition cases are still open, including one against Google’s advertising business, where the Commission floated for the first time the idea of breaking up the company, and the Orange-MasMovil merger in Spain that will be crucial for the telecom market.
A larger puzzle
The other spot to fill in is the more symbolic one of Executive Vice-President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age. Again, Breton might be too controversial as he already has three Commission departments below him.
Here the only EU top official in sight that might fit the profile is Věra Jourová, who has experience with digital files dating from the previous mandate. Vestager is the only female Executive Vice-President, meaning her substitute might also need to respect the gender balance.
Importantly, Jourová comes from Vestager’s same political family, the centrist Renew Europe. Political colour is a fundamental aspect of the distribution of the EU’s top seats and further complicates the picture as a broader reshuffle might be needed to maintain the political balance.
The centre-right European People’s Party lost a Vice-President position after Innovation Commissioner Mariya Gabriel stepped down. Her replacement, Iliana Ivanova, will take over Gabriel’s portfolio – but not the Vice-Presidency.
Finally, a decisive factor in putting all the pieces together will be who Denmark will propose as their new Commissioner. Two names currently circulating are Dan Jørgensen, the centre-left minister for climate policy, and Lars Løkke Rasmussen, centrist foreign minister and previously Prime Minister.
Sending a national heavyweight to Brussels at this point of the mandate would make little sense unless it is to position oneself ahead of the next Commission.
The music has not stopped yet, but EU leaders are already mulling their future seats.
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald/Benjamin Fox]
Read more with EURACTIV
The EPP on manoeuvres
Source: euractiv.com
