Ursula Von der Leyen to the Commission, António Costa to the European Council, Kaja kallas as High Representative of the European Union. EU leaders would have caught up an agreement on the so-called top jobs, i.e. on the highest institutional positions of the EU, in view of the official agreement that should arrive at the next summit scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Brussels. Confirmation also comes fromHandle which cites various diplomatic sources heard on the sidelines of the General Affairs Council underway in Luxembourg.
EU appointments: official agreement by the end of the week
The hands move. It should therefore be signed on 27-28 June the official agreement on the next EU appointments. Two days before the early elections in France, despite the leader of the Ressemblement National Marine Le Pen had asked to wait for the outcome of the vote to allow the new French majority to have its say. But the socialists and the popular have no intention of leaving room for the sovereignists, especially since from next July 1st Hungary will assume the rotating presidency of the EU.
Compared to hypotheses made last week, nothing would have changed, On the contrary. A decisive step backwards would have come precisely from Ppe who gave up the relay to the European Council. The agreement in principle provides that Costa will be appointed to lead the Council for an initial period of two and a half years - as foreseen by the treaties - and it will then be up to the leaders, as usual, to decide at a later date whether to extend his presidency. There will therefore be no "automatic relay", as initially requested by the People's Party.
The package provides for Ursula von der Leyen to be confirmed for a second mandate at the helm of the European Commission, for former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa to succeed Charles Michel in the role of President of the European Council and for Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas to become the High Representative of the European Union.
The agreement on the three main positions would have been reached by Popular, Socialists and Liberals. At the table sat German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez for the Socialists, Polish and Greek Prime Ministers Donald Tusk and Kyriakos Mitsotakis for the People's Party, French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (next secretary of NATO) for the Liberals.
Decisive EU Council, von der Leyen will negotiate with Meloni
The package of appointments will be submitted to the EU Council scheduled for Thursday and Friday. In case of clearance, the match will move to Parliament, where von der Leyen is due to be elected in July. With the support of the three parties that make up the so-called "Ursula majority", von der Leyen should be able to count on around 400 votes out of 720 deputies. Not enough to be safe. For this reason in recent days there has been talk of a possible expansion of the majority to the conservatives of ERC, led by Giorgia Meloni, or to the greens. However, the decision has not yet been made and this is where Italy comes into play.
Our country continues to aim for a "portfolio" of importance within the new commission. According to various international media, for the future EU majority Ursula von der Leyen will negotiate directly with Giorgia Meloni, not as leader of the EU Conservatives but as Italian Prime Minister, to decide what the portfolio reserved for Italy will be in the next Commission. There Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that the EPP negotiators should have a meeting with Meloni in the afternoon to inform her.
“Appointments are not the only relevant topic on the European Council's agenda. For us it is very important that a clear message comes out of the summit on issues that are crucial for us such as the competitiveness of the European economy, defence, migration", commented the Minister for Community Policiesand Raffaele Fitto, indicated by many as the Italian representative who will sit on the seat requested by Italy in the commission.
