The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen sent letters to the heads of state and government of their states HUH. indicate their candidates to fill the new position by August 30th Commission of the EU.
Von der Leyen will then interview candidates until mid-September to select the most suitable ones and assign them areas of responsibility. For the first time, for example, there will also be Commissioners for issues such as defence and housing.
The 65-year-old German president said she also wants a balanced gender ratio in the new Commission. “Ursula von der Leyen set this target and demanded that each country appoint one woman and one man, but many governments refuse to do so,” sources in Brussels told Naftemporiki. “So far, very few women have been appointed as Commissioners. The Commission president is even increasing pressure on EU governments to appoint women as Commissioners.”
More recently, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris appointed his former finance minister, Michael McGrath.
The Czech Republic also wants to appoint only one man, Trade Minister Jozef Sikelá. The same goes for Slovenia with Tomas Wessel.
Furthermore, von der Leyen agreed that countries that nominate current Commissioners for another term will be exempt from the one-woman-one-man rule. This means that Slovakia (Maros Sefcovic), Latvia (Valdis Dombrovskis), the Netherlands (Hopke Hoekstra), France (Thierry Breton) and Hungary (Oliver Varcheli) will send only men. So eight of the 13 or 14 men will already be in the future leadership of the commission.
The only countries that will definitely have women in the new Commission are Germany and Estonia. Germany already has a seat in the new EU Commission with von der Leyen and Estonia with Kaia Kallas, who has been chosen as the EU’s foreign policy representative.