Bulletin No50 septembre 2024 The President of the European Commission has presented the list of 26 Commissioners who will be definitively inducted after a major oral presentation to the Members of the European Union. Among them, 6 are designated as Executive Vice-Presidents.
Politically, the composition of this commission is very conservative in the majority with 12 commissioners from the EPP and 5 from Renew (liberals) and one social democrat. This is not entirely consistent with that of the European Parliament in which the left / right balance (including the extreme right ) is 48%/52% but reflects a de facto alliance of all political forces openly in favour of capitalist interests and the path towards a federal Europe. But it is the European governments in place that propose the candidates for the commissioner mandates and apart from Spain led by a social-democratic government, the European governments are made up of varied alliances with fairly undefined contours but not placing them unreservedly on the left [1] . Ultimately, it emerges that European democracy is rather illegible since the choice of voters for the European elections has little influence on the composition of the European "executive".
And so the Italian far right is represented in this commission and its representative – vice-president – takes the portfolio of "cohesion and reform" files .
Ms Ribera, former Minister for Ecological Transition in the Spanish government of Mr Sanchez (PSOE), will be in charge of the "clean, fair and competitive transition" (sic) area. In particular, she will have to monitor and adjust competition rules (open up the possibility of state aid in the context of the famous transition). This appointment is not insignificant since Ms Ribeira is not in favour of nuclear power, just like her new Danish colleague in charge of energy.
As promised, Mrs Von der Layen has appointed a Commissioner for Defence and Space (a former Lithuanian Prime Minister), a significant innovation, in line with the stated desire to restructure the European arms industry.
Finally, the "foreign affairs" portfolio is entrusted to the Estonian Prime Minister instead of Mr. Borrel, who distinguished himself by accusing Israel of having encouraged the development of Hamas. We must expect more restraint from the new (liberal) European leader and a focus on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. And this is all the more so since, in the case of the former Prime Minister of Estonia, the liberal label can be misleading. Estonia is today the country most infiltrated by Nazi ideology on the entire continent. For decades, former members of the local fascist group, the " Forest Brothers ", who fought the Red Army, have been elevated to the rank of heroes by successive leaders, former Waffen SS receive a retirement pension, which has been removed from former members of the Red Army, which liberated the country from the Nazi yoke.
The French commissioner will therefore be Mr. Séjourné, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the resigning government, in place of Mr. Breton, who was initially nominated by the Elysée. It would seem that the President of the Commission has asked the President of the Republic for another candidate. Mr. Séjourné will focus on prosperity (sic!) and industrial strategy.
The new team of the European Commission should continue its agenda in the service of the interests of capital, providing it with the necessary rules to facilitate accumulation in European territories. However, competition is very tough with other extra-European capitalists and particularly North American, who under the cover of defending democracies, are pushing to oust the Chinese adversary from the European industrial landscape.
Behind the challenges of reindustrialization or for Germany and Italy the beginning of deindustrialization against a backdrop of acute demographic crisis, there is the question of the strategy of European-based industrial capital, ready to redeploy to even more welcoming geographical areas (the United States, China, again and again, etc.). German industrialists are closing sites (Audi), German medium-sized companies with family capital are selling themselves to non-European buyers (Viessmann acquired by the American Carrier), they are developing mega projects far from Europe (BASF, chemical production unit - 10 billion euros - in China), rushing to benefit from the generosity of the United States (the Biden administration's Inflation Recovery Act) like Volkswagen.
It is interesting to note that one of the reasons for the flight of European-based industrial capital is the cost of energy in the European Union, despite the promises - not kept - of a reduction in energy prices and a complete liberalisation of the sector, of which he was a fervent supporter.
Capital knows no borders and is much more mobile than Labour. And it is clear that the world of Labour has nothing to expect from a European Commission and more generally from the European institutions which, after having put the workers of the Union in competition, will try to respond to the demands of Capital. This will be the job of Mr Séjourné, the liberal, and Mrs Ribeira, the social democrat, in a convergence of a very Germanic type.
[1] Without entering into the debate of what this term covers, moreover...