Juncker’s flawed second attempt

Juncker has gone for a straight swap, but his choice may not suit everyone.

Jean-Claude Juncker’s revised proposal for the college of European commissioners is short-sighted and self-serving. It is an understandable response to the rejection of Alenka Bratušek and makes sense when judged from within Brussels in the light of the short-term imperative to get a college approved on 22 October so that it can start work on 1 November. But putting the proposal in a broader perspective, with an eye to the longer term, its flaws become apparent: it will create credibility problems for Juncker’s administration.

The president-elect opted not to embark on an extensive revision of his college, which spares him, his commissioners and MEPs the pain of further confirmation hearings. Instead, he has gone for a straight swap: the Slovak changes places with the Slovenian – Maroš Šefčovič. becomes a vice-president for energy union and Violeta Bulc takes the transport dossier that had previously been designated to Šefčovič.

That Šefčovič is currently a vice-president in the Barroso II administration adds to the impression of minimalism: he simply retains a title that he already enjoys. In party-political terms, the vice-presidency moves from the liberal group to the centre-left, which does the least damage to the balance among the vice-presidencies.

It helps also that Šefčovič has good relations with the European Parliament. He has had responsibility for the Commission’s relations with other EU institutions for the past five years (which is why José Manuel Barroso made him a vice-president). So MEPs are predisposed to give their blessing to his new assignment and enhanced role.

However, while Juncker’s proposal might be explicable, it does not follow that it is desirable. Juncker seems to have lost track of the overall effect of his changes. Everyone can see that one of the biggest issues confronting the EU in the next five years will be relations with Russia. The military assistance given by Russia to anti-Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine is a challenge whose repercussions will persist throughout Juncker’s administration.

It surely matters that the three figures in the Commission who are assigned the biggest responsibilities for shaping EU policy in its eastern neighbourhood are Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, Johannes Hahn, the European commissioner for the neighbourhood, and now Šefčovič. They come from countries that are noticeably softer in their stance towards Russia than the EU average: Italy, Austria and Slovakia.

Inside Brussels, many people (including Juncker) have known Šefčovič from the days before Robert Fico became prime minister, when Šefčovič was Slovakia’s permanent representative to the EU. But to think of him as a career diplomat is to ignore the role that Fico assigned to him in the recent European Parliament elections. Šefčovič headed the list of candidates for Fico’s party, SMER-SD. He became a political representative of the centre-left and of Fico.

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Fico has been one of the more outspoken critics of sanctions policy towards Russia. And earlier this year, in the midst of the Ukraine crisis, Slovakia concluded an energy contract with Russia whose detailed terms remain secret to the rest of the EU.

For Juncker to make Šefčovič – who fought the last election as Fico’s representative – the vice-president for energy union is to take to ridiculous extremes the policy of assigning policy portfolios to the commissioners from countries that have most at stake in that policy.

Moreover, whereas other such commissioners are being supervised by a vice-president, in this case Šefčovič is the vice-president. The credibility of any Commission energy-security proposals and the credibility of the EU’s stance towards Russia suffer as a result.

The end effect may be that the likes of Donald Tusk, the incoming president of the European Council, will feel compelled to take a more activist approach to energy and foreign policy. Juncker will have brought that upon himself.