Just a quick post about the German discussion about the new EU Commissioner. (and a part of our concerted blog campaign). btw: Jan wrote a very useful overview of the state of play in all EU member states.
Obviously, there is no real debate about the question who should replace Verheugen since German elections will take place at the end of September. A couple of months ago, there were rumors (some more here) that Wolfgang Schäuble could be one of the potential candidates. I argued here why this is a pretty bad idea. The German government already indicated that it would like to have either the internal market, the competition or the industry portfolio.
Anyway a few days ago, Spiegel Online reported that Peer Steinbrück (check his wikipedia profile here – and his website here), currently finance minster, is a potential candidate. Merkel apparently wants to reward him for “his handling of the financial crisis”. According to this article the scenario is more likely if the SPD (that is part of a grand coalition with the CDU at the moment) looses the general elections and Merkel can form a CDU-FDP government – and Steinbrück, a SPD politician, would loose his job. So why would Merkel nominate somebody from the opposition? Apparently Barroso is active in the background:
Merkel has said in the past that the post should be filled by a member of her Christian Democrats. But Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has been urging European governments nominating their national candidates for the Commission to make sure that it isn’t staffed by too many conservatives.
It is pretty sure that nothing will be decided before the elections on 27 Sep. So we have to wait and see.
3 Comments
What a strange world: while in Austria the Socialist-led government will very likely nominate a Conservative member for the European Commission Germany could now do the opposite.
In Austria the main reason is that the SPÖ is in a coalition with the Conservative ÖVP. But nominating somebody from the opposition? Anyway, maybe the difference is that Austrian Socialists wouldn’t even have a person with the skills necessary to become EU Commissioner.
Yes, I am still trying to make sense out of it. It would be quite a remarkable thing as the last CDU/CSU commissioner was Peter Schmidtbauer in the early 1990s!
Especially if there is a CDU/CSU-FDP government after the general elections I doubt whether Merkel can resist the pressure from her own party to nominate a CDU member.
On the other hand Merkel could secure herself quite some influence in Brussels if she promotes Steinbrück especially if he gets an important portfolio (which is quite likely).
It could also be a strategy in the case of another grand coalition. A good bargaining chip that could secure her SPD support for something else…
Peer Steinbrück – The new German EU Commissioner? – Kosmopolito: Just a quick post about the German discussions .. http://bit.ly/Jw12Y
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[...] The secret has been kept very well. Günther Oettinger was actually not one of the likely candidates. Several other people were thought to have better chances, for example Wolfgang Schäuble, Elmar Brok, Peter Hintze, Peter Altmaier, Roland Koch …even Peer Steinbrück. [...]