Ursula von der Leyen is set to miss her target of a gender-balanced top team at the European Commission, after EU governments snubbed her request to propose male and female candidates.
The first female president of the EU executive, who was re-elected for a historic second term last month, is drawing up her team of commissioners. Akin to government ministers, these are senior EU officials who oversee the bloc’s climate, technology and industrial policies, negotiate trade deals, police European law, dole out billions of grants and draw up the budget for the union.
After her re-election, von der Leyen said she was aiming for “an equal share of men and women” at the top table. But her goal is in jeopardy after member states ignored her request to propose two candidates, a man and a woman.
Before a 30 August deadline to submit names to Brussels, 14 men and five women have been proposed as candidates, according to analysis of government announcements and local media reports. Of the seven countries yet to finalise the nomination, two (Lithuania and Romania) are expected to rubber-stamp nominations of male candidates soon, while another two (Belgium, Denmark) are widely expected to propose a male candidate. Men have frontrunner status in two other countries yet to nominate (Italy and Portugal), while women are the favourites in Bulgaria.
In the worst-case scenarios, the next commission – expected to take office in December – could have only 22% or 26% women (including von der Leyen herself), a worse gender balance than the previous commission when it took office in 2019 with 44% female representation.
The chair of the European parliament’s gender equality committee, Lina Gálvez, urged von der Leyen to insist that EU governments offer her female candidates. “We never achieve anything without moving boundaries, without making pressure,” she told the Guardian. “Especially now, when anti-gender movements are the core of fascist, anti-democratic movements … we cannot show that our commitment to gender equality is weak.”
Complicating von der Leyen’s task is an exemption from providing female candidates for governments renominating their serving commissioner. Most returnees are men, such as Thierry Breton of France, who recently sparred with the tech mogul Elon Musk, and Maroš Šefčovič, a commission vice-president with a sprawling portfolio including EU-UK relations. Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis, the Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra and Hungary’s Oliver Várhelyi have also been tapped to return to Brussels. Dubravka Šuica, a Croatian former mayor in charge of demography policy, is the only woman nominated to return.
This exemption has stoked resentment. “Why should we have a woman again when [our] ideal candidate is a man and Slovakia can nominate Šefčovič for a fifth time,” said one EU diplomat with mild exaggeration for comic effect. Slovakia, which has never had a female commissioner, has renominated Šefčovič for a fourth term.
Several EU leaders have said they have no intention of nominating a woman, as there is no legal requirement to do so. “Respectfully and in accordance with the treaties we have taken the decision to send one name,” Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said in June, as he confirmed his intention to propose Michael McGrath, who was then finance minister.
The request for two candidates was not welcomed by many EU capitals, as the prized job of EU commissioner is also part of complex negotiations between governing parties and/or prime ministers and presidents. Lithuania’s prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, this week described her country’s process as “baroquely complex”, as her government announced its intention to send to Brussels one of her predecessors, Andrius Kubilius, following a bruising tug of war over the job.
Governments that spurned von der Leyen’s call for gender balance could see their candidates assigned weaker portfolios, rather than the “big economic job” many governments are angling for. In previous years, governments that disappointed the commission had their candidates put in charge of multilingualism, or education and culture.
“Every commissioner wants resources, money [to spend on policies], power, competence and it’s not possible for all of them,” said Sophia Russack at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “There are not 27 or 26 important portfolios,” Russack added, suggesting this could be a form of leverage –“‘either you send me a woman or you get one of those portfolios that nobody wants’.”
A male-dominated top team would be an embarrassing setback for the EU’s gender-equality strategy, which in 2020 called for “gender balance of 50% at all levels of [Commission] management by the end of 2024”.
Insiders suggest that a less gender-balanced commission increases the chances of commissioner candidates being rejected by the European parliament. All nominees must appear before MEP committees, before the assembly votes on whether to approve the entire commission. “One or another will be targeted on their suitability and the fact that their government didn’t bother to propose a woman,” a second EU diplomat said.
A European Commission spokesperson declined to comment on the candidates and gender balance.
• This article was amended on 26 August 2024 because an earlier version referred to Michael McGrath as Ireland’s finance minister. He was at the time that Simon Harris confirmed his intention to nominate McGrath, however he has since left that post.
