Tuesday in Brussels is DG-Day, when a major staff reshuffling engineered by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief of staff Martin Selmayr will create a new power structure among top Eurocrats, completing a year of change across EU leadership.
If all goes to plan, the top officials will learn Wednesday whether they’ve been promoted or sidelined in the day-to-day management of the EU’s €140-billion-a-year budget and legislative pipeline. At stake are the 35 top staff Commission positions: the directors-general of each of the EU executive body’s departments. Unlike lower level posts, the top tier of bureaucrats is expected to rotate every five years, a rule Juncker has previously described as “stupid.”
Sources close to Juncker confirm that he and Selmayr have kept tight control on the process. Still, there has been no shortage of speculation in Brussels about who will get which key DG posts in the shakeup.
POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen directors-general, deputy-directors-general, spokespeople and Cabinet officials for this story. However, given the extreme secrecy of the process and the personal stakes involved, none were willing to be quoted directly. Other Commission sources said they were impressed at how much secrecy Selmayr has maintained.
How will it play out?
Final decisions will be taken Tuesday on short-lists of three candidates prepared by each commissioner for each DG post. Those lists were submitted to Kristalina Georgieva, the commissioner in charge of human resources, and Juncker two months ago. Eventually other Commission vice presidents were invited into the process of choosing the right candidates. The full college of Commissioners will then approve the list put to them.
Even though attention has been diverted to the Greek bailout negotiations, senior Commission sources said Juncker is determined to stick to his promise to make the announcements this week. Successful candidates will not have a lot of time to consider their offers — they will be made on virtually a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Such reshuffles typically involve the movement of around 70 directors-general and deputy directors-general. The successful candidates are chosen on a mix of merit, competence, management effectiveness and geographical balance. External candidates will not be part of this reshuffle, as the positions were never advertised.
The Juncker-Selmayr approach
When DG posts were last swapped en masse, in 2010, the announcements came gradually. This time, sources said, there will be only one coordinated announcement.
Juncker has also reserved the right to keep long-serving directors-general in place. Though 12 of the current crop have been in their posts for more than five years already, Juncker doesn’t want to wreck relationships that work merely to tick a box.
The process, which began informally in November 2014 when the new Commission took office, has taken enough time to spawn its own trend: the rise of the “Acting Director-General” — seat-fillers who may or may not lose the “Acting” label on Wednesday. These include Ladislav Miko at the Health department, Paraskevi “Vivi” Michou at the Justice department and Timo Pesonen at Communications.
Expect loyalty to be rewarded. Those close to Selmayr, for example, can experience rapid rises. Michou was a middle manager “head of unit” five years ago. After helping implement a telecoms law Selmayr brokered, three quick career jumps followed and she is now all but certain to be confirmed as a director-general.
The woman problem
Overall just nine of the top 72 posts in the European Commission (12 percent) are currently held by women, far behind the private sector in most EU countries and well below the Commission’s own diversity targets.
Only five women are permanent directors-general, among 35 such positions, along with Michou serving as an acting-director-general. With only three deputy directors-general out of 37 at the second tier, the official talent pipeline won’t help Juncker meet his aim of increasing substantially the number of women at the top.
The Commission, when asked by POLITICO, was unwilling to confirm whether Juncker and Georgieva did indeed receive at least one woman candidate for each post.
What is clear is that Marianne Klingbeil, Mariana Kotzeva, Vivi Michou and Monique Pariat are almost certain to be promoted. Without all four obtaining permanent DG posts, the Commission will fall short of its ambitions “to promote high-caliber women,” as one Berlaymont insider described it to POLITICO. And even if they are promoted, Juncker will still be short of the 30 percent target he informally aims for.
To get close to that threshold, Juncker and Selmayr would need to open up posts to external candidates; promote more women into vacant deputy director-general posts; and quickly re-promote those women in a mid-term reshuffle.
Top ten candidates for promotion
According to several sources, here are some of the names being mentioned for top Commission jobs:
- Michel Servoz: According to one former Secretariat-General colleague, “DG Employment for him is below his capabilities, and he could really balance a weak commissioner.”
- Marianne Klingbeil: The current deputy secretary-general is said to be “a total workaholic who knows all the files. She is not a political animal, you would put her a file where you really need a technocrat.” She is considered a strong candidate for the Health department.
- Olivier Guersent: According to a colleague, the current deputy DG of financial services (known as FISMA) is a top prospect to run the department and is “the definition of a polished French civil servant, who understands how the economy really works.”
- Martine Reicherts: As one of the few women in the DG class, and a Juncker loyalist from Luxembourg, she is likely to be upgraded from the lowly “Publications Office.”
- Johannes Laitenberger, currently deputy DG in the Legal Service, could be bumped up or sent as a cooling influence on Margrethe Vestager at DG Competition.
- Sabine Weyand was chief of staff to Louis Michel and is now a well-regarded director for Secretary-General Catherine Day. Her background suggests she would be well-placed in as deputy DG, possibly at DG Trade.
- Elizabeth Golberg, a Dutch national, runs possibly the toughest part of the Secretariat-General, the team working on “Smart Regulation” and coordinating the Commission Work Program.
- DG AGRI could be the source of two promotions: Monique Pariat is one of three female deputy directors-general and sources tip her to get her DG stripes tomorrow, possibly in Health if it does not go to Klingbeil; and Joost Korte is a former director at the Secretary-General’s department, who may also get the nod.
Dark horses
Three names to keep an eye for a quick rise, possibly only in the aftermath of tomorrow’s shake-up are: Margaritis Schinas, former MEP, Barroso adviser and now Commission spokesperson; Sixtine Bouygues, director at DG Communication and long-time Selmayr loyalist; and Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, currently director for health at DG Research.
Who’s staying put?
Catherine Day, in the top post of Secretary-General and Ann Mettler, newly appointed as Director-General of the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), are certain to stay. Kristalina Georgieva is likely to keep Nadia Calvino at the budget department.
Multiple sources suggest certain directors-general have a lock on their current posts: Jos Delbeke will to stay on at the climate department to ensure stability in the EU strategy in the lead up to the COP21 Climate Summit in Paris this December; while Dominique Ristori will stay in post at DG ENERGY, as a result of heavy French lobbying designed to safeguard their nuclear industry, and “because his strong push to diversify from Russia and connect markets, Iberia in particular.”
The only way is across
When you’ve reached the top, sometimes the only way is across. Take Marco Buti, who has spent more than seven years in the top chair at DG Economic and Financial Affairs. While Juncker may prefer him stay put, only Catherine Day has been in post longer, so the chances of a move are high.
Said one source, “He’s very well respected and very capable. He does all the Greek stuff, all the G20. If he doesn’t get Trade it would be Capital Markets Union. For him they have to find something.”
Likewise, Jonathan Faull commands respect across Brussels. If he is convinced to stay in service, it is likely he would be offered the chance to head the Commission Legal Service or to replace Buti at DG ECFIN.
Ryan Heath, associate editor and senior EU correspondent at POLITICO, was a spokesman for the European Commission from 2011 to 2014.