By Marine Strauss and Bart H. Meijer
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) -EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday named Spain’s Teresa Ribera as the bloc’s next antitrust commissioner while Estonia’s Kaja Kallas will be in charge of foreign policy.
Lithuania’s Andrius Kubilius will be the EU’s first defence commissioner – a new role designed to build up European military manufacturing capacity in the face of Russian aggression in Europe’s eastern flank.
The Commission is the 27-country European Union’s most powerful institution. It has the power to propose new EU laws, block mergers between companies and sign free trade deals.
Each EU member state will have one seat at the Commission’s table, a role comparable to a government minister, although its political weight varies greatly depending on the portfolio.
Other names on the list of EU Commissioners include French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne in charge of industrial strategy, while Slovakia’s Maros Sefcovic will oversee trade policies.
All candidates will undergo hearings with lawmakers in the European Parliament who have to sign off on their nomination.
COMPETITIVENESS KEY
Von der Leyen said the new Commission will focus on prosperity, security and democracy as well as much-needed competitiveness for the green transition and digitalisation.
“We want to build a competitive, decarbonised and circular economy with a fair transition for all,” she told a news conference.
Climate change “is the major backdrop of all what we are doing,” von der Leyen added.
But, compared to her first five-year term, “the topic of security, triggered by the Russian war in Ukraine, but also the topic of competitiveness, have … much more impact on the composition and the design” of the new team, she said.
Ribera, Spain’s ecological transition minister, will need to fill the footsteps of Denmark’s long-serving antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who has stepped up pressure on Big Tech to improve competition on its platforms.
She will also oversee the EU’s stance on foreign subsidies, another hot-button issue as companies in key sectors like electric vehicles and energy production are struggling to defend their business models against cheap competition from abroad, particularly from China.
All commissioners will report to German conservative von der Leyen, who this summer was handed a second term as EU chief executive by member states after her political camp won the most votes in EU elections.
The next EU Commission is expected to take office by the end of the year, meaning one of its first tasks will be fielding the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.
A second Trump presidency could sharply alter Western unity on supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and up-end EU trade relations with the world’s biggest economy.
There was some drama on Monday on the next Commission’s line-up, when France picked Sejourne as its new candidate after the incumbent, Thierry Breton, abruptly quit with tough words for von der Leyen.
(Reporting by Marine Strauss, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Bart Meijer, Brussels bureau; Writing by Kate Abnett, Ingrid Melander, Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Christina Fincher)
