Ursula von der Leyen is running for a second term
But also — Industry & State Aid, Orange & MásMóvil, Poland, Ukraine, Connectivity Package
Hello! It’s March 1st, and here is your EU news summary for the week. Feel free to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
The Briefing
On 19 February, Ursula Von der Leyen unsurprisingly announced that she was “running” for a second term the head of the European Commission. While her re-election after the European elections is likely, it is not a done deal.
ANNOUNCEMENT • "I ran in 2019 because I firmly believe in Europe. (…) And when the question came up whether I could imagine becoming President of the European Commission, I immediately said yes intuitively. Today, five years later, I am making a very conscious decision."
These are the words chosen by Ursula von der Leyen to announce that she is running for a second term as President of the European Commission.
She made this announcement on 19 February at a meeting of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), the German political party belonging to the European People's Party (EPP) in the European Parliament.
The EPP is currently the largest political group in the European Parliament (EP) and is expected to retain this position after the elections.
The CDU has formally announced it will support von der Leyen's candidacy.
PROCESS • While the selection process to become President of the European Commission is fairly straightforward on paper, it has become controversial in the wake of the 2019 European elections.
The rules are the following: the President of the European Commission must be proposed by the European Council — i.e. the leaders of the Member States — by qualified majority vote. The candidate must then receive the support of the majority of MEPs.
In 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon added new ingredients. The European Council must now propose a candidate "taking into account the results of European elections".
During the first post-Lisbon EU elections in 2014, the EP used this new element to strengthen its influence in the selection process. MEPs introduced the principle of the Spitzenkandidat ("head of list" in German) whereby it is the leader of the political group that came first in the EU elections must be proposed as a candidate by the Council.
In this system, there is this idea that EU citizens can indirectly choose the President of the European Commission by voting in the elections.
However, although Jean-Claude Juncker was the EPP's Spitzenkandidat in 2014, he considers that he was the "first and last". In 2019, Manfred Weber, the EPP's lead candidate for the European elections, was sidelined by the Council and Ursula von der Leyen was instead proposed and elected.
SPITZENKANDIDAT • Ursula von der Leyen's nomination in 2019 has shown that it is not necessary to be a Spitzenkandidat to become President of the EU executive.
Is the concept of the Spitzenkandidat now a thing of the past? For MEPs, the answer seems to be no. Several political groups — including the Greens and the Party of the European Left — have already chosen their head of list for the forthcoming election.
The EPP is expected to do the same at a congress to be held from 6 to 9 March, during which Ursula von der Leyen will most likely be selected.
Yet many consider this process to be at best illusory, at worst hypocritical. Martin Schulz, the former President of the European Parliament behind the Spitzenkandidat system, has declared that Ursula von der Leyen was a "fake" Spitzenkandidat.
European journalist Dave Keating goes so far as to describe the Spitzenkandidaten process as "a sham system where voters are lied to and told their vote will determine who the president is, when at best all it does is possibly influence where the appointment is on the political spectrum".
SUPPORT • Regardless, Ursula von der Leyen will need the support of the Member States and the Parliament if she is to be reappointed as head of the European Commission.
As far as the European Council is concerned, the majority of Member State leaders are expected to support von der Leyen's candidacy despite some tensions.
Things are less certain when looking at the European Parliament. In 2019, Ursula von der Leyen's nomination was approved by the Parliament by just 9 votes thanks to a coalition between the EPP, the Social Democrats (S&D) and the Liberals (Renew).
Ursula von der Leyen's record has been criticised by some of the MEPs who supported her in 2019. The EPP and some Liberals accuse her of weakening the competitiveness of European businesses and increasing their administrative burden, particularly through Green Deal initiatives.
In recent months, she has reacted by slowing down on the Green Deal and announcing initiatives aimed at strengthening European competitiveness. This move is probably also aimed at convincing members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) — who are right of the EPP in the EU political spectrum — to support her.
Nonetheless, it is not certain whether this will be enough. Last week, MEP François-Xavier Bellamy announced that the French right-wing party Les Republicans (EPP) would not be supporting the German candidate. Bellamy considers that the EU under Ursula von der Leyen has been marked by an agenda of "constraints, complexity and control".
At the same time, von der Leyen is trying to avoid alienating the Greens and the Social Democrats, for whom a regulatory break on the environment is simply not conceivable.
PROGRAMME • While the Green Deal was the backbone of von der Leyen's programme in 2019, the her priorities for the next five years seem broader and consensual.
"We must adapt our competitiveness to new conditions, achieve our climate goals together with business, exploit the opportunities of AI…push forward digitalisation, implement the migration pact and expand Europe’s defence capabilities," she said in Berlin last week.
She also announced that a defence commissioner post would be created if she is re-elected for a second term. This statement follows other announcements concerning the financing of European defence.
WHAT NEXT • Ursula Von der Leyen will continue her work as President of the Commission during the campaign. However, she will have to comply with certain ethical rules that she herself devised.
For example, each Commissioner who is a candidate for the European Parliament (or a candidate to become President of the European Commission) will have to keep their work separate from their campaign, by creating separate social networking accounts and ensuring Commission resources are not used for electoral purposes.
Inter Alia
INDUSTRY & STATE AID • On 20 February, 73 CEOs of major European industrial groups met in Antwerp at the invitation of Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC).
The summit ended with the signing of a ten-point action plan designed to restore the competitiveness of Europe's industrial sector. Just as the Green Pact was the flagship of the current Commission, the Antwerp Declaration stresses the need to make industrial competitiveness a centrepiece of the next Commission's political agenda.
On the same day, Danish Industry Minister Morten Bødskov said to his German counterpart in Berlin that it was time to stop relaxing the European rules on state aid. Before Bødskov’s announcement, eleven Member States — including Denmark — wrote a letter to the European Commission saying that this relaxation unduly benefits richer Member States (Germany and France, in other words).
The simultaneity between the Bødskov's claims and the Antwerp Declaration — the second of which explicitly advocates a "simplified state aid regime" — suggests that a major political debate will take place during the next few months of the EU elections campaign.
ORANGE & MÁSMÓVIL • On 20 February, the European Commission authorised a €18.6 billion merger between telco operators Orange and MásMóvil.
This authorisation is accompanied by corrective measures designed to ensure that competition in this market is not reduced in Spain. Among other things, the two operators will have to cede certain frequencies to Digi, the Romanian mobile operator.
The tide seems to have turned on mergers in the telecoms sector. Until now, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had not authorised any merger that would lead to a reduction from 4 to 3 mobile operators in the same national territory.
According to a Commission working document consulted by the FT, the authorisation of this merger seems to have been facilitated by the current need to speed up investment in telecommunications networks and to consolidate Europe's strategic autonomy.
Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market and CEO of France Télécom (now Orange) from 2002 to 2005, has long campaigned for the Commission to be less strict on merger control in the telecoms sector in order to strengthen the position of European companies and encourage long-term investment.
POLAND • At a press conference in Warsaw, Ursula von der Leyen announced that the European Commission would start to unfreeze 137 billion euros of European funds intended for Poland but currently frozen because of rule of law breaches.
"The College of Commissioners will come forward on two decisions on European funds that are currently blocked for Poland", she said.
These decisions follow the efforts of Donald Tusk, the new Polish prime minister, to re-establish the rule of law in his country.
UKRAINE • February 24 marked the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. On the eve of that day, the EU Council adopted the 13th package of sanctions against Russia. It had previously been blocked by Hungary.
This new package of sanctions increases the number of entities and individuals targeted by sanctions to reach more than 2,000. For the first time, companies in mainland China and India are targeted by sanctions.
Until now, sanctions had not affected companies from mainland China following pressure from several Member States — including Germany — fearing Beijing's response.
CONNECTIVITY PACKAGE • On 21 February, the European Commission launched a series of initiatives forming a "connectivity package" aimed at updating and harmonising European regulations on digital infrastructures, encouraging investment and strengthening their security and resilience.
As part of this package, the Commission announced a consultation on the EU telecommunications market. The consultation will be open until June and is based on a white paper presented on the same day on the following topic: "How to master Europe's digital infrastructure needs?".
The white paper and the consultation signals that the Commission is listening to the demands of telco operators, who have been saying for years that they are finding it difficult to maintain their business model and invest sustainably in network infrastructure.
The Commission has also unveiled a recommendation on the security and resilience of submarine cable infrastructures, in which it suggests the creation of a group of experts to improve the coordination of initiatives at European level and to examine Member States' risk assessments and their implementation of EU legislation.
The Commission also committed to adopting a recommendation on post-quantum cryptography by 2025.
What We’ve Been Reading
For Bruegel, Ben McWilliams, Giovanni Sgaravatti, Simone Tagliapietra and Georg Zachmann show that the EU can do more to limit its energy dependence on Russia.
This edition was prepared by Augustin Bourleaud, Luna Ricci, Guillaume Renée, Maxence de La Rochère and Matthieu Coget. See you next week!