By Canadian Press

EU chief unveils her new team after a long and bumpy road; women get top roles

Sep 17, 2024 | 2:15 AM

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen put women in many of the top roles of her new team in her next five-year tenure at the head of the bloc on Tuesday after many EU member states had been reluctant to live up to her demand for gender parity.

Von der Leyen put six women among the eight top positions in her team. She and foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas were already agreed on by government leaders, but she added Spanish Socialist Teresa Ribero to lead the green transition on top of becoming the competition and anti-trust czar. Three other women were also named as vice presidents.

After French heavyweight Thierry Breton resigned and openly criticized von der Leyen for allegedly “questionable governance” on Monday, von der Leyen gave former Prime Minister Stephane Sejourne the industrial portfolio.

It left France with a strong voice in the Commission, and many saw Breton’s shock resignation more as a removal by von der Leyen of one of her most open internal critics after exerting pressure on French authorities.

Compounding such problems was the defiance of many of the 27 member states as von der Leyen struggled to get anywhere close to gender parity on her Commission team — they staunchly refused to give her a choice between a male and a female candidate.

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She said that originally, EU nations only proposed 22% female candidates before she started to push for more.

“So I worked with the member states and we were able to improve the balance to 40% women and 60% men. And it shows that — as much as we have achieved — there is still so much more work to do,” von der Leyen said.

If she could not get full gender parity in numbers, von der Leyen made sure they were more than well represented in the top jobs.

After days of secret talks with individual European governments about their picks, von der Leyen huddled with the leaders of the political groups at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, to discuss the makeup of her college before making the final announcement.

Even if the Commission’s makeup has hardly become the talk of bar rooms or barber shops across the vast EU of 450 million people, it has enthralled the upper echelons of politics and bureaucracy, as they sought to boost one candidate or undermine another.

The Commission proposes legislation for the EU’s 27 member countries and ensures that the rules governing the world’s biggest trading bloc are respected. It’s made up of a College of Commissioners with a range of portfolios similar to those of government ministers, including agriculture, economic, competition, security and migration policy.

The Commission is to start work on Nov. 1, but speculation is rife that it might not get down to business before January.

A former German defense minister, von der Leyen has been pressing smaller countries to change their minds. In recent weeks, a man who was the preferred candidate of the government in Slovenia withdrew and a woman was proposed in his place.

She decides which country gets which portfolio, and some of them, like those involving trade or finance or EU enlargement, are coveted by certain countries. Plum jobs like the post of vice president — the commission has seven of these — are also much sought after.

Raf Casert, The Associated Press