Polish FM Sikorski floated as a potential EU defence commissioner as agri commissioner faces critique

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski is being floated as a possible candidate to head the new EU Defence Commissioner portfolio, while Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski faces troubled waters amid ongoing bloc-wide farmers’ protests.

Von der Leyen told the Munich Security Conference over the weekend that if re-elected, she would aim to create a separate post for European Defence Commissioner but did not go into detail about the scope of the portfolio.

After the announcement, Sikorski’s name began circulating in Polish media.

Sikorski is an experienced politician who served as defence minister in the Law and Justice (PiS, ECR) governments of Prime Ministers Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jarosław Kaczyński (2005-2007) and as foreign minister in the two cabinets of current Prime Minister Donald Tusk (2007-2014, current term).

According to sources in Brussels quoted by the Polish media, Sikorski is keen to get the job. For his part, Tusk is said to have lobbied the EU institutions hard to promote his minister as a candidate for a potential commissioner role.

During her visit to Warsaw last week, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola hinted that she would like to support Sikorski if he were a candidate for the European Commission.

Sikorski has already run for two top international defence posts. In 2014, his name was circulated as a candidate to replace then-NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Later that year, as the candidate of the EPP, he was considered for the position of EU chief diplomat, but instead, Tusk was chosen for the European Council’s top job, which made another Pole in a high-level role impossible.

With the European elections only a few months away, Sikorski’s name has also already been again circulated for the bloc’s chief diplomat post.

However, according to the latest projections and if von der Leyen is re-elected, Brussels observers suggest the European Council post could go to a Socialist candidate, while the EU’s top diplomat job would fall to a candidate from the Liberals.

Current frontrunners for EU top posts include Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa (Socialist), Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (Socialist) and Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas (Liberal), according to Brussels sources.

Wojciechowski’s job on the line

Poland’s current man in Brussels, Janusz Wojciechowski, is likely to lose his position of agriculture commissioner with Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, leader of the agrarian Polish People’s Party (PSL, EPP), blaming him for the EU’s green policies that have proved problematic for farmers.

Wojciechowski has refused to resign so far, saying he would not act under pressure because it is not the duty of EU Commissioners to take orders from their national governments. He added that no farmers’ organisation had asked him to resign.

A European commissioner can only be dismissed by the European Commission president. The European Parliament can dismiss the whole Commission as such, but not a specific commissioner.

“I think Wojciechowski actively supports the interests of Polish and European farmers,” Jerzy Wierzbicki of the Polish Union of Beef Cattle Breeders and Farmers told Euractiv.

Polish Onet recently published von der Leyen’s letter to Wojciechowski, in which she accused the commissioner of violating the EU executive’s code of conduct by making statements on trade liberalisation with Ukraine that contradicted its general position on the issue.

The letter could indicate that Von der Leyen is seriously considering removing Wojciechowski from the EU executive, said Piotr Maciej Kaczyński, an EU policy expert at the Bronisław Geremek Foundation.

The question remains whether the ECR Group would defend Wojciechowski, Kaczyński said, suggesting that it might likely not.

“Wojciechowski is a parody of a Commissioner, and if he remained in the Commission until the end of his term, he would not have much significance there,” he said.

According to the analyst, Wojciechowski lost his political base not only with the change of government in Poland but also by losing the support of the PiS leader.

Wojciechowski also had little influence on the Commission’s decisions, Kaczyński said.

Wojciechowski’s opposition did not prevent the EU executive from prolonging the suspension of trade barriers with Ukraine, leading to increased agricultural imports into Poland and other EU countries and destabilising their domestic markets.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)