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The European parliament has approved Ursula von der Leyen’s team for her second five year term as president of the European Commission, which will begin on December 1.
Von der Leyen’s slate of commissioners won 54 per cent of the votes cast on Wednesday, following a deal between EU political groups last week.
It was backed by lawmakers from the centre-right and centre-left as well as groups including some Green MEPs and the rightwing Brothers of Italy.
Von der Leyen will have to deal with global trade tensions prompted by Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January pile pressure on already squeezed businesses.
She told MEPs before the vote she would boost defence spending, reduce red tape to improve Europe’s flagging economy and maintain support for Ukraine.
The former German defence minister will preside over the most rightwing Commission in decades. Almost half of the 27 commissioners, including von der Leyen, are from the centre-right, while one is an ultraconservative and one is from the far right.
By comparison, in the outgoing team, 12 commissioners were rightwing politicians, and only five out of 20 in the 1999 executive led by Romano Prodi.
Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People’s party, told journalists on Tuesday that the vote would demonstrate the “stability” of political leadership in the EU assembly after elections in June in which voters swung rightward.
The far-right Patriots group, which includes the party of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, is the third-biggest in the EU parliament. They are followed by the European Conservatives and Reformists which includes the Brothers of Italy of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Both groups will now have a commissioner each, along with 13 from the EPP, including von der Leyen.
The EPP has already allied itself with the Patriots and the ECR on several occasions, embracing their harder stance on migration and hostility to green policies.
The rightwing pivot has sparked outrage from the pro-EU parties to the left of the EPP, which in July had struck a pact to back von der Leyen, and which threatened to delay the whole process.
The Greens, the Liberal Renew party and the Socialists at one point threatened to block the approval of Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi and Italy’s Raffaele Fitto but in the end backed down. Fitto, in charge of regional spending, will be one of six vice-presidents. Várhelyi will be commissioner for health and animal welfare.
The right in turn threatened the appointment of Spain’s Teresa Ribera, who will hold the powerful competition and antitrust portfolio. The Socialist, currently serving as Spanish environment minister, endured a rough ride from the EPP over her alleged responsibility for hundreds of deaths in flooding.
On Wednesday von der Leyen told lawmakers that the new Commission will hold talks with the European car industry to help it through a “deep and disruptive transition”.
Vehicle makers in Europe including Ford and Volkswagen have announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past month as they struggle to compete with falling demand, competition from cheaper Chinese imports and strict EU emissions rules due to come into force next year.
Von der Leyen has also promised to stand by Ukraine despite signs of ebbing support in some EU countries and in the US, and preserve the green energy transition that was the hallmark policy of her first term in office.
That pledge, and the appointment this week of former Green leader Philippe Lamberts as her adviser, convinced a narrow majority of their MEPs to back her. Lamberts will work with industry and NGOs on hitting the EU’s goal of being climate neutral by 2050.
Von der Leyen described the Greens as “part of the pro-European majority” in parliament that she wanted to continue working with on reaching the bloc’s climate targets.
But those policies have become increasingly unpopular as the bloc grapples with slow growth, deindustrialisation and political stasis.
The leaders of its two most powerful countries, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron, are deeply unpopular and head weak governments, with early elections due in Germany in February and in France potentially later next year.
Additional reporting by Alice Hancock in Brussels
Data visualisation by Steven Bernard
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