Can a new crew of European commissioners revive the continent?

For a sense of what Europeans fret about, look at the job titles given to European commissioners in Brussels. Five years ago a Greek official was put in charge of “protecting our European way of life”—a job that largely entailed keeping migrants out. (After a furore he was merely asked to “promote” this elusive way of life.) The recurring theme of the job titles handed out to a new set of commissioners on September 17th is that the European Union is now fretting about its place in the world, particularly its economy. One commissioner has been asked to look after not just trade but also “economic security”, another aims to promote “tech sovereignty”, yet another to deliver “prosperity”. To add to the anxious vibe, for the first time the bloc will have a straight-up defence commissioner.

The fretful tone is warranted. War is still raging in neighbouring Ukraine, whose prospects will dim if Donald Trump wins the American election in November. Last week Mario Draghi, a former Italian prime minister, issued a gloomy report on the EU economy, spelling out reforms needed to rekindle the bloc’s growth. Politically, Europe is rudderless. Governments in France and Germany, the bloc’s two biggest countries, are unpopular and crippled by coalition woes.

Ursula von der Leyen, who in June was picked by national leaders to serve a second term as the European Commission’s president, thus has lots of scope to shape the EU’s executive arm. Each of the 27 countries nominates one commissioner, but it is up to the president to decide who does what. (The European Parliament will grill the nominees in the coming weeks.) In the past many top jobs went to politicians from small, open countries in northern Europe. This time it is officials from big countries with statist instincts in southern Europe that dominate.

The most important fresh face in Brussels will be Teresa Ribera, until now the Spanish ecology minister. One of six vice-presidents of the commission, her sprawling portfolio includes Europe’s flagship decarbonisation efforts. Once known as the Green Deal, it is now to become a “clean, just and competitive transition”—a concession to those who think environmental rules have burdened businesses and imposed costs on consumers, too.

Included in her brief will be the EU’s powers to enforce antitrust rules, and to prevent national governments from showering favoured companies with subsidies. Such “state aid”, in Eurocratese, soared in recent years as the EU faced first covid-19 and then an energy crisis linked to the war. The outgoing competition enforcer, Margrethe Vestager, a Dane with liberal instincts, often stood in the way of the dirigiste policies egged on notably by France. But it has been an increasingly lonely fight.

In recent years the chief proponent in Brussels of the statist approach was Thierry Breton, a former French finance minister. He had been expected to return for another five years as the commission’s point man on industry, regulating and subsidising EU firms to do politicians’ bidding. But a spat with Mrs von der Leyen led her to suggest to Emmanuel Macron that he be dumped. Instead it will be Stéphane Séjourné, a close ally of the French president, who will take over the job. Defence—meaning mainly trying to co-ordinate the continent’s fragmented arms industry—will be the purview of Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister.

Another prominent southern European will be Raffaele Fitto, until now a minister in the hard-right government of Giorgia Meloni in Italy. His “cohesion and reforms” brief includes oversight of the vast Next Generation fund, which involved national governments deploying €750bn ($835bn) of money jointly borrowed in the aftermath of the pandemic. Mr Draghi in effect recommended rebooting the scheme to invest hundreds of billions more euros into making the EU more productive. His advice, often echoing the dirigiste faction, has been adopted wholesale by Mrs von der Leyen. Perhaps Mr Draghi is the official who will have mattered most of all: incoming commissioners have been asked to implement his suggestions. ■

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