Spanish Socialist Teresa Ribera gets top EU role steering climate and antitrust policy

Spain’s deputy prime minister, the outspoken Socialist Teresa Ribera, will take charge of Europe’s “clean transition” and antitrust enforcement, in a powerful role at the heart of the next European Commission.

Ribera is to become one of six executive vice-presidents in the incoming EU executive led by Ursula von der Leyen, which is expected to start work at the end of the year.

The French president Emmanuel Macron’s close ally Stéphane Séjourné, another vice-president pick, gets a sprawling portfolio in charge of industrial policy, while the Italian far-right leader Giorgia Meloni’s choice, Raffaele Fitto, will oversee funding for Europe’s poorer regions.

Von der Leyen, the first woman to lead the commission, outlined the choices for her team of 26 top officials in Strasbourg on Tuesday. After weeks of wrangling with national capitals that nominate candidates, the final list was a careful balancing act of geography, party affiliation and gender.

It was also a show of strength by von der Leyen, who strong-armed some governments into providing female candidates. She oversaw the departure of some of her sternest critics, including France’s Thierry Breton, who was expected to serve a second-term in Brussels until his shock resignation on Monday, when he criticised “questionable governance” at the commission.

The decision to award Fitto a vice-presidential post is already proving controversial in the European parliament, especially among Green and Socialist MEPs whose support was crucial to von der Leyen’s successful reelection in July.

Four of the six vice-president nominees are women, while the overall team of EU commissioners is 40% female. While this falls short of von der Leyen’s aim of achieving a gender-balanced commission, it is an improvement on a few weeks ago, when barely one-fifth of the candidates were women.

Von der Leyen told reporters that she had been on track for 22% women and 78% men, which was “completely unacceptable, so I worked intensively with the member states and we were able to improve the share”.

For the first time there will be EU commissioners for defence (Lithuania’s former prime minister Andrius Kubilius) and housing (Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen, who is also in charge of energy policy). Croatia’s Dubravka Šuica the only woman to return to the commission for a second term, apart from von der Leyen, gets the new job of commissioner for the Mediterranean.

Another returnee, the Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra, will be commissioner for climate, net zero and clean growth and is expected to represent the bloc in international negotiations on the climate crisis.

On paper, he and Jørgensen are more junior to Ribera. Luxembourg MEP, Christophe Hansen, has been appointed farming commissioner. A member of the centre-right European People’s party, Hansen and Hoekstra are seen as balancing Ribera, whose appointment to a big climate role has unnerved some centre-right politicians. Jørgensen is also a social democrat.

Ribera, likely to be one of the heavyweights of the next commission, is not afraid to speak her mind. In the run-up to the European elections, she criticised von der Leyen for refusing to rule out working with Meloni’s hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists faction.

As competition commissioner, Ribera will be following in the footsteps of Margrethe Vestager, the high-flying Danish politician who ordered Apple to repay €13bn in underpaid taxes during a decade-long crusade against “aggressive tax planning”. Referring to her climate role, von der Leyen said Ribera would “make sure Europe remains on track during the European green deal”.

The EPP celebrated having 14 of the 27 places at the commission’s top table, including von der Leyen, cementing its dominance as Europe’s strongest political force that has won every European election for 25 years.

EU commissioners are akin to government ministers: they are responsible for drafting and enforcing EU laws on climate and nature protection, the single market, economy technology, energy, as well as overseeing the bloc’s foreign policy and negotiating trade deals.

Each EU member state sends a commissioner to Brussels, who is meant to represent the common European interest, rather than national positions. All commissioner candidates will be questioned in the European parliament in hearings expected to take place in October. MEPs typically reject two or three commissioners, before voting on whether to approve the entire commission.

Hungary’s nominee, Olivér Várhelyi, picked for a second term, is seen as especially vulnerable. A former diplomat, Várhelyi is close to Hungary’s strongman leader, Viktor Orbán, and has been criticised for his record in the outgoing commission, where in charge of enlargement policy he was perceived as following Budapest’s agenda. In the new commission, he would be EU commissioner health and animal welfare.

EU officials expect the new commission to take office on 1 December, although von der Leyen declined to confirm, saying it was impossible to foresee the length of the parliament’s due diligence processes.

A few governments that snubbed von der Leyen’s request to nominate male and female candidates were denied the weighty economic jobs they had sought.

Ireland’s Michael McGrath, who stood down as his country’s finance minister, will take charge of democracy, justice and the rule of law. The Czech Republic’s Jozef Síkela, hoped by Prague to take charge of energy or industrial policy, has been given a brief of international partnerships, putting him in charge of the EU’s answer to China’s belt and road initiative, the global gateway.

Austria’s Magnus Brunner, put forward for a big economic role, will be in charge of migration.

Defending the weightiness of the jobs, von der Leyen said about 20 member states had wanted a strong economic portfolio but “we do not have 20 strong economic portfolios”.

She also defended the decision to hand a vice-presidency to Fitto, noting that two of the European parliament’s 14 vice-presidents came from his ECR faction. “Italy is a very important country and one of our founding members and this also has to reflect in the choice,” she said. It was perhaps a tacit admission that while all member states are equal under the EU treaties, some carry more weight than others.

The co-leader of the Green group Terry Reintke said Fitto’s nomination to a vice-presidency was “a big concern for our group” and “could endanger the pro-democratic majority in the European parliament that voted for Ursula von der Leyen in July”. Looking ahead to next month’s hearings, the Greens “will not give Raffaele Fitto an easy ride”, she added.

The senior German Social Democrat MEP Bernd Lange insisted the commissioner hearings would not be a foregone conclusion: “Nobody gets a blank cheque.”