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E.U. Nominates Germany’s Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, for President of European Commission Who Did the E.U.’s Leaders Choose for Its Top Jobs?
(about 2 hours later)
BRUSSELS — After nights and days of grueling negotiations, the European Union selected its top leaders on Tuesday, nominating Germany’s defense minister to guide the bloc in a tumultuous new era for Europe, where right-wing nationalists are trying to break the bloc from within and traditional parties are weakened. BRUSSELS — As the European Union’s importance on the world stage grows, its politics are fragmenting: Smaller, more ideological parties, including populists and nationalists, have made gains and weakened the traditional, more centrist parties.
On Tuesday, the bloc’s leaders nominated Ursula von der Leyen, the multilingual German defense minister, for arguably the most powerful position in Brussels: president of the European Commission, the bloc’s important bureaucracy. How have the bloc’s leaders responded? By calling on strong consensus builders to head up its key institutions. Here are the major names you need to know.
For the crucial position of head of European Central Bank, they named Christine Lagarde, the French director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington. Ms. Lagarde, 63, a lawyer and former minister in France, has been running the I.M.F. since 2011. While not a trained economist, she is widely considered an excellent manager with extensive contacts around the world. Germany’s center-right defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, will be returning to the city of her birth, Brussels, once she’s confirmed to lead the European Union’s most important institution and her father’s former workplace: the European Commission.
Ms. Lagarde and Ms. von der Leyen, both political conservatives, would be the first women to hold these key positions, probably the two most important jobs at stake. A medical doctor and economist by training, she is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. She is likely bring to a fervor for more European integration to the job — music to the ears of much of her 32,000-strong staff of bureaucrats, but less so to skeptical leaders in countries like Hungary and Poland, who would like to keep their nations’ priorities front and center.
Ms. von der Leyen, 60, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party, is well known and speaks fluent English and French, having spent some of her childhood in Brussels. As defense minister, she has advocated a more active role for Germany in contributing to NATO. Ms. von der Leyen served as Germany’s first and, so far, only female defense minister, and had previously served in social policy roles like minister of family affairs, working in several of Ms. Merkel’s cabinets.
Ms. von der Leyen will need to be confirmed by the European Parliament, but Ms. Lagarde will not. Her goal of a more integrated Europe — she told the German weekly Die Zeit in 2015 that she wanted her grandchildren to live in a “United States of Europe” — could prove difficult to achieve at a time when a small but important part of the bloc wants to hold back. She has also expressed support for the idea of a European army, a rather extreme position even among so-called federalists who would like to see some national institutions phased out and replaced with joint European Union ones.
[The European Union’s four presidents have many responsibilities, and have to work in a cacophony.] One of Ms. von der Leyen’s top priorities will be overseeing the implementation of some kind of Brexit, though she has lamented Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and said Britain has brought much-needed pragmatism to Europe.
The bloc’s leaders also decided to name Charles Michel, 43, the young acting Belgian prime minister, a liberal, as president of the European Council of heads of state and government; and proposed Josep Borrell, 72, a Spanish former foreign minister, as the new foreign policy chief. Like Ms. von der Leyen, Mr. Borrell will need to be confirmed by the European Parliament. Already one of the world’s most prominent policymakers, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund chief, will head up the European Central Bank. Ms. Lagarde, 63, has led the I.M.F. since 2011 — lifting up its profile, though not without controversy, through the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the eurozone crisis.
After European Parliament elections in May brought a fragmented and polarized mix of parties to power, the European Union’s leaders in Brussels had struggled to forge a package deal that balanced ideologies, gender and regions. Although not a trained economist, Ms. Lagarde worked as a prominent corporate lawyer specializing in antitrust with a major Chicago-based firm, Baker & Mackenzie. She rose through the ranks to lead the firm’s Western Europe practice and became its first chairwoman in 1999.
The nominations followed an exhausting, grinding negotiating process among the European Union’s 28 member states. Talks had failed to produce consensus once and nearly failed again Sunday night and Monday morning. In the mid-2000s, Ms. Lagarde turned to public life in France, holding several cabinet positions during the conservative presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, including that of finance minister. Ms. Lagarde is credited with restoring the profile of the I.M.F. after replacing Dominique Strauss-Kahn as its leader after he was accused of sexual assault in a case that was later dismissed.
Although the European Union’s leaders are more responsible for keeping the bloc functioning than a pressing crisis or policy decision, the negotiations to decide who would run key institutions were in many ways about papering over some of the bloc’s most existential rifts: West versus East, conservative versus progressive, nationalist versus Continental. In 2011 she became entangled in a corruption investigation involving a French businessman, though she was not herself a suspect in the case. In 2016, a French court found Ms. Lagarde guilty of negligence in relation to the same case, but the court did not impose a penalty.
The struggle underlined the political fragmentation of Europe, as larger parties have lost ground to smaller, more ideological ones, making consensus more difficult to reach. And it reflects the broader problems facing the European Union in charting a clear path forward: The bloc has in recent years struggled to form a unified position on a series of crises, including migration, climate change, and the rise of populists in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, which has increased inequality and exposed weaknesses of the common euro currency. Ms. Lagarde was named directly to the Central Bank, and does not require a confirmation. She is widely regarded as a tough and energetic negotiator, qualities she will need to coordinate monetary policy and major economic decisions for the 19 nations, encompassing about 340 million people, who use the euro.
The new European Council president will be Charles Michel, the acting prime minister of Belgium, which has still not formed a government following national elections in May. At 43, he is among the youngest European leaders, though he grew up surrounded by politics: His father, Louis Michel, was a well-known liberal politician and himself a former European commissioner.
Mr. Michel, who like his father is a member of a liberal party, is used to being the youngest politician in the room. He became a provincial councilor at 18, the youngest member of the Belgian Parliament at 23, a regional minister the next year, and the youngest Belgian prime minister in 2014, at 38.
As prime minister, he proved effective at keeping together a fragile coalition government of right-wing Flemish nationalists and Walloon liberals for nearly five years. The alliance finally fell apart late last year, when the Flemish nationalists took a harder stance on migration and pulled the plug.
Mr. Michel is known for being a deft coalition-builder — a useful skill in Belgium’s fractious politics — and for his discreet manner and diplomatic language, which often allows space for compromise.
This skill set will be indispensable as he takes on the tough task of carving out consensus among 28 European Union leaders who are ideologically fragmented. He will likely have to call on his experience dealing with far-right governments and members of nontraditional political parties in his new role, facing rising populism and anti-migrant sentiment across Europe. He will not require confirmation by members of the European Parliament.
The role of the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy is seen as less prestigious than the other top institutional positions, but its importance has grown, especially as the bloc tries to save its fraying nuclear deal with Iran.
The man nominated to the role is Josep Borrell, 72, a Spanish socialist, former president of the European Parliament and Spain’s current foreign minister in the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
After working in the 1970s as an engineer for Cepsa, a Spanish multinational oil company, Mr. Borrell was elected as a city councilor in a suburb of Madrid. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Socialist Party, earning a junior appointment in the national government in the 1980s and becoming an elected member of the Spanish Parliament in 1986.
His European Union credentials are strong. In 2004 he led the grouping of socialist parties in the European Parliament elections and was chosen as the institution’s president, serving a full term that ended in 2009.
Corruption controversies have haunted Mr. Borrell throughout his career. He has stepped down twice amid investigations into political corruption among members of his entourage: Once as Socialist party leader in the late 1990s and a second time as president of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 2012.
He made a political comeback in 2017 as one of the most outspoken opponents of Catalan secession from Spain. He was appointed foreign minister in June 2018 and successfully ran for the European Parliament in May, but gave up his seat to remain in the Spanish government. He will require the Parliament’s confirmation for the role.