Brussels, 04/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - The incoming president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has achieved his target of having a sizeable representation of women in his team.
After the more than laborious start to this affair, Juncker has now reached a definite figure of nine female candidates in his team. On Thursday 4 September, Belgium chose the Flemish EPP MEP Marianne Thyssen - “an excellent choice”, according to Junker. Romania plumped for Corina Cretu, who was officially designated by the Romanian government.
Cretu was in competition with Dacian Ciolos, the current commissioner for agriculture and who has long been touted as the future Romanian commissioner. With nine women, Junker is now free of any possible quarrel with the European Parliament, which expressed concern about there not being enough women in his team.
On Thursday, Juncker, the former head of the Eurogroup, continued meetings with the commissioners-designate, such as Phil Hogan from Ireland, Pierre Moscovici from France and Jonathan Hill from United Kingdom. The hearings are continuing against a background of widespread speculation over the allocation of the portfolios and several draft organigrams have been leaked to the press. Exaggerated or fanciful (Germany would inherit the economic and monetary affairs brief, Hungary would take over trade and Belgium multilingualism) and with many mistakes in names, these documents have been neither confirmed nor rejected by those close to Junker. They have said, however, that the president had been working on a large number of possibilities which were regularly revised. One of these models speculates that France would get competition, although many different sources have suggested over recent days that France would be responsible for economic affairs. According to more plausible models, Germany would be given trade, United Kingdom energy, Greece immigration and Lithuania health.
Any uncertainties regarding the forthcoming Commission will be definitively removed next week. (SP)