Exotic briefs and tangled spaghetti: Von der Leyen’s portfolio paradoxes

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to get rid of “rigid stovepipes,” as she unveiled plans for her second mandate on Tuesday.   

She may indeed seek to avoid the kind of stiff structures that can lead to isolated and contradictory policymaking. 

But complex compound portfolios and overlapping responsibilities risk making her Commission look more like tangled spaghetti.  

Weird pairings

One common theme of the new portfolios she has handed to her 26 lieutenants is the creation of exotic compound briefs.  

Slovakia’s Maroš Šefčovič will pair trade — a flagship policy area where Brussels holds significant power — with overall relations with other institutions such as the European Parliament.

Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen has been given responsibility for housing alongside energy, while Belgium’s Hadja Lahbib combines crisis management and equality – prompting outrage from activists who worry she’ll have to split her time between pandemics, forest fires and women’s rights. 

Those choices may be as much about the quality of the candidate as the portfolio. Šefčovič is seen as a safe pair of hands who’s hoovered up many miscellaneous duties in his time in Brussels; Lahbib, as a woman with Algerian roots, is perhaps viewed as a good pick for equality in the normally lily-white, male-dominated Commission. 

Socialist MEPs, having insisted on a post to tackle Europe’s housing shortage, wanted it to go to one of their own, and Jørgensen is one of the few centre-left options von der Leyen had.

Bumping heads

In other cases, overlaps among portfolios are likely to lead to duplication or territorial infighting.

Such squabbles are nothing new: there’s been a longstanding dispute over who’s responsible for food policy between the Commission’s health and agriculture services.  

Those aren’t necessarily now resolved: according to the brief sent by von der Leyen, Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi remains responsible for food safety and affordability — though Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen is officially designated as “commissioner for agriculture and food.” 

Worse still, Várhelyi will have to tussle with Lahbib over the newly established Commission department for Health Emergency Preparedness (DG HERA).

Among her duties as Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Croatia’s Dubravka Šuica is invited to fix tensions in the Middle East, “promoting all the steps needed for a two-state solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

That might seem a tall order for the former mayor of Dubrovnik, whose previous responsibilities included preparing a report on demography and organising the Conference on the Future of Europe.

It also may mean bumping heads with Estonia’s Kaja Kallas, responsible for the EU’s overall foreign policy.

Cooperation between the two “is not clear yet”, one senior commission official said today; while Kallas will deal with “questions of war and peace,” the requirement for frequent travel to the region means it’s too big a job for one person, added the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hearing trouble

In some cases, von der Leyen’s picks might lead to trouble when she submits her roster for confirmation by the European Parliament. 

Alongside his climate brief, the Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra has been handed responsibility for tax — though he’s a finance minister from a country that’s long been in Brussels’ sights for aggressive tax planning, and the Paradise Papers leak of 2021 revealed his links to the Virgin Islands, a tax haven.

Ireland’s Michael McGrath may also feel the heat for having opposed a 2018 referendum to legalise abortion.

The topic is only indirectly related to the justice portfolio he’s been handed.

But it’s also the kind of issue that resonates in Brussels, as Malta’s Roberta Metsola discovered when her longstanding opposition to abortion nearly stymied her bid to become European Parliament president in 2022.

Gerardo Fortuna contributed reporting.