One of the bloc’s unwritten rules is that the Commission must be geographically balanced in its make-up in each policy area.
Over the past five years, fiscally conservative Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, who hails from Latvia and had oversight of financial policy, acted as a counterweight to Italian Paolo Gentiloni, who helmed the economy department. Dombrovskis now wants a job focusing on Ukraine, officials have said.
Northern Europe, meanwhile, was represented by Danish digital and competition czar Margrethe Vestager; she frequently clashed with Breton, who was in charge of the industrial portfolio. But Vestager will step down at the end of this term, and as yet no candidate is in line to replace her as the darling of economically liberal EU countries.
“I don’t see a new Vestager,” an EU diplomat said.
Given their huge debt piles, France and Italy have both favored looser fiscal rules and more common borrowing. French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Meloni have made for surprising bedfellows on economic policy on more than one occasion.
“It can’t be another Italian or Frenchman [in the EU’s economics department],” said a diplomat from one of the bloc’s more frugal countries. “Just look at their spending plans. That could be very detrimental.”
