by
N. Peter Kramer
November 1, in his first speech as Commission President, Juncker thanked the European people, the European Parliament and the leaders of the 28 EU member states for their support. The European citizens would have been surprised to hear this (but they probably didn’t). Most of them didn’t vote at all in the elections for the new European Parliament; for the ones that vote there was no Juncker at all on any ballot not even in Juncker’s home state Luxembourg. And the European Parliament? The two Barroso Commissions got more yes votes from the EP in both 2004 and 2009 than the Juncker team got last week…
President Juncker is an aimable person, a very experienced European politician and … he is creative. He appointed seven vice-presidents to help him. Frans Timmermans, from the Netherlands, became 1st Vice-President and Juncker’s right hand; the Italian Commissioner Federica Mogherini is Vice-President for Foreign Affairs; the other 5 vice-presidents got the job of controlling the ordinary 20 commissioners. The question is: will this work in practice? Most of these 5 vice-presidents are from small countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and have to control commissioners from Germany, France, UK, Spain; quite often political heavyweights not really used to being controlled.
Another interesting question is how much space Timmermans will get for his job as Juncker’s “right hand”. The fact is that the President already has such a right hand, Martin Selmayer, his chef-de-cabinet, an outspoken German, not a member of Merkel’s CDU but ‘angeheucht' to this party. On the question of a reputedly chaotic person like Juncker is able to run a complex organisation called the European Commission, Selmayer answered: ‘don’t worry, I can…’
