‘Dream team’: How all the EU’s top jobs could be held by women

There’s a scenario in which the presidents of the EU’s main institutions could all be women.

After the EU election in June, the top jobs at the European Council, the Commission and the Parliament — plus the head of the European External Action Service — will be distributed among the main political groups.

Speculating on who will get those jobs is a leading pastime in the Brussels bubble (as well as here at POLITICO); so many female politicians are being linked with those roles that some diplomats are starting to connect them.

POLITICO is hearing a lot of talk about four names — all women — in connection with the jobs: Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen staying on as Commission chief; Malta’s Roberta Metsola remaining in post at the Parliament; Mette Frederiksen, the current prime minister of Denmark, becoming president of the European Council; and Kaja Kallas, the Estonian PM, taking over as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (the EU’s foreign policy chief, for short).

“It’s my dream team,” said a diplomat who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “It would send such a strong message.”

Of course, no decisions have been taken; there are often surprises when the jobs are given out (von der Leyen wasn’t on many people’s radars last time around); and many names of male candidates continue to be floated. Plus, the decision on the European Parliament’s president belongs more to political parties and MEPs than it does to national leaders.

But there’s a lot about this combination that could make sense — in a scenario where EU leaders, the majority of them men, decided to go for an all-women option — including the division between the political groups. The Commission and the Parliament would remain in the hands of the European People’s Party (the latter for at least the first two-and-a-half years of the mandate, when the EPP could pass the presidency to another party). The socialists would get the European Council, and the liberals would rule the roost at the External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic arm. That fits with the EPP and S&D’s coming in first and second in the election, with the liberals likely to finish fourth, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.

The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) and the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) will likely do very well in the EU election, with the former expected to finish third and the latter fifth, but they won’t get an EU top job (there’s speculation that the ECR could get a vice-president of the Commission, but that’s an insufficiently senior job for this exercise).

The names also make sense, especially as von der Leyen and Metsola very likely aren’t going anywhere. The likelihood of Frederiksen replacing Charles Michel at the helm of the European Council is also increasingly being taken seriously by diplomats.

Meanwhile, Kallas’ name is increasingly mentioned in corridor chats and over coffee, due in large part to another important factor: geography.

In light of the war in Ukraine, many Eastern European leaders believe that one of the top EU jobs should head in that direction. Kallas herself made that point to POLITICO last year, saying: “We should be on the radar for top jobs.”

Moreover, the return of Donald Tusk — the former president of the European Council who is back as Polish prime minister — makes Poland the largest European country with an EPP leader, meaning it would be “simply impossible to avoid” giving a top job to an Eastern European, an EU official said. Under this scenario, the East would have a leader (Kallas), the West another (von der Leyen), the North would have Frederiksen, and the South would have Metsola, albeit temporarily. Add to that list Christine Lagarde as president of the European Central Bank (her term lasts until 2027) and Nadia Calviño, who has just started as president of the European Investment Bank — and women would hold all of the EU’s most powerful positions.

Nothing’s easy in the EU, however. For some on the center left, Frederiksen is not socialist enough given Denmark’s tough line on migration, while for some diplomats Kallas was too hawkish on Russia to land the top job at NATO, meaning she could face the same resistance for the top diplomatic job.

The EU does not have a great track record when it comes to appointing women to senior roles, apart from the foreign policy chief position, where two of the three holders of the job have been women (the U.K.’s Catherine Ashton and Italy’s Federica Mogherini, before Spain’s Josep Borrell took the post after the last EU election).

The European Council president job, however, has had three holders — all men (Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy and Charles Michel, with Poland’s Donald Tusk sandwiched in between). The Commission had only had male leaders until von der Leyen took over in 2019.

Since the first European Parliament election in 1979, only three of the 17 assembly presidents have been women: Simone Veil, Nicole Fontaine, and now Metsola.

When it comes to committees and political groups within the Parliament, women are also under-represented. Currently only three out of seven political groups have female leaders (the Socialists & Democrats, Greens and The Left), while only seven women (against 17 men) are chairs of Parliament committees — even the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) has a man at the helm!

Some male officials seem a little rattled at the prospect of women taking all the top jobs, with one joking about being reduced to cleaning toilets and another saying he hoped to at least be allowed to serve the coffee.