It’s all over (except it’s not all over)!

Follow the movers, shakers, and deal-makers in a post-election Europe.
By POLITICO
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HELLO and welcome to Transition Playbook. It took slightly longer than many had anticipated but EU leaders finally agreed on who should take the top jobs at the European Commission, European Council and the bloc’s foreign policy service — and it was exactly who they wanted all along. It was a late night at the summit here in Brussels, so let’s look at what happened and what’s still to come.
You know this already but just in case …
Ursula von der Leyen has been picked by EU leaders to have a second term at the top of the European Commission. The next step is a vote in the European Parliament in mid-July. In a secret ballot, she’ll need the support of 361 MEPs, just over half of the assembly. Put together, her center-right European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats, and the liberal Renew group have just under 400 seats. But not everyone in those groups — including her own EPP — will support her. So who will?
If she looks left to the Greens, that’ll annoy parts of the EPP. If she looks right to the European Conservatives and Reformists — home of Giorgia Meloni (more on her later) — then she’ll cross a red line for the socialists and liberals. To put it simply, it’s going to be very close. If she falls short, the European Council has a month to come up with a candidate. That’s never happened before so we’d be in uncharted territory.
There are no such problems for António Costa, the former prime minister of Portugal who was last night picked by EU leaders to be the next president of the European Council. He’s in, with no more hurdles to clear (apart from learning how to use technology, after rather farcical scenes in the main press room of the Council when he joined by video link but with too much zoom and too little light). Not the smoothest of starts but the European Council president is there to run meetings of leaders, not to sort out the IT.
Costa, who takes over from Charles Michel on December 1, said he was “delighted” to be part of the “team” with von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas. As you would expect, neither von der Leyen nor Michel answered a direct question on whether they were concerned about Costa’s legal woes. The socialist politician is under investigation in Portugal as part of a wide-reaching influence-peddling probe but has not been charged with any crime.
Kaja Kallas is also not over the line despite being chosen as the EU’s next foreign policy chief, to succeed Josep Borrell. She’ll go through the same process as all members of the prospective next College of Commissioners and face a grilling in the European Parliament at some time in the fall.
But what of Giorgia Meloni, whose anger levels had been the subject of much debate since six negotiators from the EPP, socialists and liberals — not, you’ll note, the ECR — decided that von der Leyen, Costa and Kallas should get the nod. Well, Meloni did indeed seem annoyed and voted against both Kallas and Costa, while abstaining from the vote on von der Leyen.
Meloni said on X that the top jobs deal was “wrong in method and substance” and said she voted the way she did “out of respect for the citizens and the indications that came from those citizens during the elections.”
Mind you, Meloni did vote in a “decent way.” That’s according to outgoing Dutch PM Mark Rutte who said “I think she did it in a very decent way, and measured.” He added: “Once every five years when we come to a decision on top jobs, we do not need to have unanimity… It is absolutely acceptable for Italy to have a different position.” That said, Rutte was leaving and is off to run NATO, so what does he care?
MEP ‘FIRMLY’ DENIES AMBITION TO QUIT ECR: Lithuanian MEP Waldemar Tomaszewski hit back at claims made by former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in an interview with POLITICO, in which the ex-PM said that Tomaszewski was part of talks to split from the ECR group to join a new breakaway Central and Eastern European grouping with the likes of Viktor Orbán and Andrej Babiš. Tomaszewski is the only MEP from a party representing Poles in Lithuania and was re-elected in June.
‘Not true’: “This is not true, because I believe that the ECR Group should continue to function, especially as it is now the third force in the European Parliament,” Tomaszewski wrote to POLITICO in an email, adding that he considered attempts to break up ECR as “irresponsible.” “The ECR Group should continue to operate, because after successful elections of a majority of delegations and joining of new MEPs, further escalation of divisions would be at least politically insane and even a betrayal of the voters,” Tomaszewski added.
FRANCE’S NEXT COMMISSIONER: Who gets to nominate the next commissioner from France? Should it be President Emmanuel Macron? National Rally President Jordan Bardella has claimed the future government (which he hopes to lead), not Macron, should pick the candidate. “It will be among the first decisions we make,” Bardella said, adding he was “exploring” names to put forward.
One of those names could be the former chief of the EU’s border agency (Frontex), Fabrice Leggeri, who joined the National Rally earlier this year and then successfully ran for a seat in the European Parliament.
Not so fast, said Macron, as he wants Thierry Breton to serve a second term as France’s European commissioner. The French president made the comment about Breton, the current internal market commissioner, at a meeting of the liberal Renew Europe group in Brussels on Thursday before a meeting of EU leaders.
Macron would like Breton to be promoted to the powerful role of executive vice-president of the Commission with a big economic portfolio, but that would still need to be negotiated with von der Leyen.
MEP JAILBIRD: A Greek MEP and mayor-elect of an Albanian town who was arrested for vote-buying will stay in an Albanian prison after his appeal was denied.
IRELAND’S MALE COMMISSION PICK: “Respectfully and in accordance with the treaties, we have taken a decision to send one name,” Taoiseach Simon Harris said Thursday, after lining up Finance Minister McGrath to come to Brussels as a member of the EU Commission.
CZECH MATES: Economist and university professor Danuše Nerudová is one of two names being officially touted as the next Czech commissioner. The other is Trade Minister Jozef Síkela.
DANISH CHOICE: Rumors were flying around the press room at the European Council that Danish PM Mette Frederiksen — whose name was linked with the European Council president’s role — could send herself to Brussels.
LUX SWITCH? The Socialists’ Spitzenkandidat Nicolas Schmit could still be Luxembourg’s next commissioner, even though the government is EPP-led, and Christophe Hansen would appear the obvious pick.
SWEDISH NAMES IN THE FRAME: Swedish media reports that EPP MEP Tomas Tobé could be his country’s EU Commissioner. Other names in the mix include Moderate Party chief Karin Enström and Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, as well as Foreign Minister Tobias Billström.
Current excitement level: Tired but unemotional.
Last word: “It has never been our intention to exclude or offend anyone,” Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis about the top jobs deal drawn up by six negotiators before the summit (of which he was one). Giorgia Meloni was, nevertheless, offended.
THANKS TO: Seb Starcevic, Eddy Wax, Paul Dallison and Lola Boom
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