The Conversation: Ursula Von der Leyen: why controversial choice for EU top job may actually have been the right one

MEPs themselves are to blame for the demise of the Spitzenkandidaten system. Had they managed to unite behind a candidate, it would have been difficult for the council to override their decision, despite having legal authority to do so. But none of the lead candidates – Frans Timmermans, Margrethe Vestager and Manfred Weber – was able to command a majority. [...]

Eastern European countries opposed Timmermans because he had led inquiries into rule of law violations in Hungary and Poland. But Timmermans also failed to win the EPP’s support. As the largest parliamentary party group, the EPP fought to select one of their own, even if it meant sacrificing the Spitzenkandidaten system in the process. Vestager had announced her candidacy late and was unpopular in Italy as well as the Visegrad countries (albeit not as unpopular as Timmermans).

Technically, those who refused to back Weber and Timmermans could have been overruled by other member states in the council, because none had a blocking minority (representing more than 35% of the EU population). In fact, a key reason why the Lisbon Treaty increased the use of qualified majority voting was to facilitate the EU’s ability to take decisions without the burdensome requirement of unanimity. However, council members chose not to take that route. Instead, the council members stuck with the informal norm of unanimous decision making because they worried that overriding the objectors might provoke them to resort to obstructive political tactics. [...]

Had von der Leyen failed to garner sufficient votes, it would have plunged the EU into crisis as there is no obvious alternative candidate who could have commanded a majority in the European Parliament. In Berlin, the grand coalition of Christian Democratic Union (CDU/ CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) might have fallen apart. The SPD would have had a hard time explaining to German voters why it torpedoed the first German Commission president in over 50 years, thereby blocking the first woman to lead the Commission (a woman who, unlike her main male rival, has held senior executive public office for 15 years).

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Deutsche Welle: Analysis: Key takeaways from the EU election results

The European parliamentary elections have seen their biggest turnout in 20 years. Participation in the EU elections was up by neary 10 points compared with five years ago. Europe's traditionally large centrist parties have suffered significant losses, as Greens, liberals and nationalists gained ground in Brussels. But voters delivered a complicated message: it’s a patchwork result from a patchwork union.

Politico: Vestager keeps Commission presidency options open

With French President Emmanuel Macron — a liberal in search of a Europe-wide political family — hinting at support for a Vestager European Commission presidency, and many in her own party pressuring her to run, the commissioner’s Mechelen trip looked very much like pre-candidate activity. [...]

Vestager’s path to the Commission presidency would not be straightforward. She would need backing from the Danish government, which doesn’t seem keen to give her another term in Brussels. The liberal ALDE alliance has little chance of coming first in the European Parliament election so its candidate would not be in pole position for the job. And she may have too much star power to win the endorsement of national leaders, who do not like to be upstaged. [...]

Speaking later in her office at the Commission’s headquarters, Vestager said that while she agrees there remain “systemic threats to the rule of law” in Poland and Hungary, she’s determined that Brussels should not impose a narrow view of rule of law on EU member countries. “Dialogue is still a possibility,” she said, emphasizing that “rule of law can be achieved in a number of different ways.”

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Social Europe: Macron Takes Aim At European Politics

Macron’s “La Grande Marche pour l’Europe” will mimic the programme that toppled France’s dominant political parties and transformed his La République En Marche! movement into a political force in 2017. Over the course of six weeks, he will dispatch ten ministers and 200 parliamentarians to survey the French people’s views on Europe and European issues. The results will then be considered in developing a platform that can beat populist and Euroskeptic parties in the 2019 European Parliament election.

Macron has persuaded all other EU member states (with the exception of Hungary and the United Kingdom) to conduct similar public consultations, which he hopes will lay the groundwork for the EU-level reforms he proposed in major speeches in Athens and at the Sorbonne last year. [...]

Similarly, Macron’s vision for Europe seems to reconcile the irreconcilable: his plan is both to preserve member states’ sovereignty and deepen EU integration. Institutionally, this means supporting supranational bodies while also allowing for more flexibility in areas where national governments, rather than Brussels, are better positioned to solve problems. [...]

On migration, Macron wants both to secure Europe’s external borders and ensure that the burden of taking in refugees is shared across the EU. In the short term, he is pushing for an agreement among member states on refugee quotas. But, in the long run, he supports greater harmonization of asylum systems, or even the creation of a central EU asylum agency. [...]

The second Ricoeurian concept underpinning Macron’s worldview is the idea of a European “refoundation.” Whereas the first wave of European integration was largely limited to economics, Macron now wants to focus on politics and culture, starting with the European Parliament election next year.

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Politico: Vestager to investigate IKEA’s taxes

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition boss, is poised to open a formal probe into the tax affairs of IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, according to people familiar with the investigation. [...]

Commission investigators have been looking at royalties paid by a Dutch entity to a Luxembourg subsidiary holding intellectual property during the period between 2006 and 2010. They have also been examining the acquisition of that intellectual property by a Dutch IKEA entity, financed by an internal group loan from Lichtenstein, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry.

In February 2016, Green MEPs published a report that found IKEA companies had avoided €1 billion in taxes across Europe over the prior six years. IKEA did so, the report claimed, through an aggressive franchising structure, the payment of business charges to Lichtenstein and a sweetheart tax ruling in the Netherlands. [...]

IKEA, which turned over some €35 billion in 2016, would be a prominent European scalp for Vestager, who has been dogged by accusations she is “disproportionately” targeting U.S. companies.

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Politico: Margrethe Vestager versus the Olympics

The IOC is one of the world’s most venerated brands, and an investigation opened in 2015 by Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, into the Olympic-affiliated International Skating Union (ISU) is set to limit the rights of sporting federations to manage their sports and brands. Vestager is expected to reach a verdict, which could include fines, by the end of this year.

IOC President Thomas Bach was in Brussels this week — becoming the first person in his position to address the EU’s national ministers — and told POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast that sports bodies should not be treated like businesses. [...]

Bach said the Olympic movement pumps about a billion euros a year back into grassroots sports — “it’s €3 million per day.” For this reason, he wants EU regulators to look past the multi-billion euro broadcast rights deals the IOC benefits from to see a social movement rather than a business.

EU competition regulators agree that sports have an important social role and say they don’t want to get involved in sporting decisions. But they point out that many sports bodies are also businesses too — so any bans on athletes should be proportionate.

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Politico: Macron ♥ Vestager

There is  a stumbling bloc: She’s a member of the Liberals, languishing in fourth place behind two center-right and the main center-left political families in terms of size and support. The backing of a French president — even one whose approval ratings have gone through the floor — could provide a major boost to the Liberals, however. [...]

The current Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced last year that he would not seek a second mandate when his term ends in 2019. And Vestager, who has been dubbed the “most powerful woman in the EU,” would be in a good position to replace him, and is believed to be interested in the job. However, she would likely face competition from fellow Commissioners Jyrki Katainen and Pierre Moscovici as well as Michel Barnier, the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator. [...]

The liberal ALDE group to which Vestager belongs is the fourth force in the European Parliament and the party has eight EU leaders in its ranks, including Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Xavier Bettel from Luxembourg and now Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic. If Macron joins the Liberals, they would leapfrog the Socialists to become the second largest group in the Council. [...]

According to EU lore, an aspiring president of the European Commission is said to need three qualities. First they must have been a member of the European Council — a head of state or government. Second, they must come from a country that is a member of the eurozone. Third, they must not have been around long enough to have made enemies in national capitals.

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Politico: Margrethe Vestager’s Intel problem

The European Court of Justice is scheduled to publish its verdict in an appeal by Intel against a once-record €1.06 billion sanction. Though the court hasn’t overturned a Commission judgment in almost 40 years, the U.S. chipmaker has some reason to hope for victory in this case: A senior member of the court last October lambasted the Commission and recommended its appeal be upheld.

A judgment in Intel’s favor will have a direct and immediate impact on Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s landmark antitrust probes into other American firms Qualcomm and Google, and it carries wider implications for Commission inquiries into dominant firms and cartels across the board. [...]

The verdict, in a case launched by one of Vestager’s predecessors more than 10 years ago, comes as she enters the last two years of her mandate as Europe’s commissioner for competition. Closing two open cases each against Google and Qualcomm will be critical for her legacy.

Vestager has been frustrated at the way competition probes drag out across years, but she is well aware of the importance of winning before the courts. “Fast is always better than slow, but best of all is to be just,” she often says.

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