Big countries nearly always get EU’s prized single market job

BRUSSELS — Since 2004, control of the European Commission’s EU market and industrial briefs has nearly always been in the hands of some of its largest countries: France, Germany, Italy or Poland. 

With the success of the single market at the heart of the European project, those countries have been central to the bloc’s lawmaking. One exception to that was Ireland’s Charlie McCreevy, who was single market commissioner until 2010.

In theory, commissioners are meant to represent all Europeans, not only their own countries — each of the 27 member countries is allotted one post. But each country vies fiercely for the best roles, proving not even national capitals are convinced that’s true. 

“Generally, what you see is that larger member states with more power more consistently get the files they care about,” said Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.

As a fresh batch of commissioners prepare for a new five-year term, POLITICO screened past and present commissioner portfolios, ranging from José Manuel Barroso’s first team of commissioners in 2004 (the first cohort to fully include commissioners from the 10 countries that joined the EU that year) through to current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s second team 20 years later.

No country has been in charge of the industry and single market briefs more than France. Stéphane Séjourné’s incoming stint as chief of prosperity and industrial strategy included, France will have had its finger in the internal market pie three out of five times. 

That’s the result of France and Germany’s power in the EU, as well as a “long tradition, an intellectual history really, of French thinking about industry and building a single market,” argued Tordoir. The EU’s largest economy, Germany, has been more focused on trade with the rest of the world, he added.

France has gone to great lengths to land the next big industrial role in the bloc, reportedly swapping its initial Commissioner-nominee Thierry Breton out for Séjourné to get a better post in the next Commission.

Paris’ stance has aroused suspicion in other countries.

“The perception is sometimes that this French focus [on internal market] … is really just a cloaked way of building its own French industrial champions,” said Tordoir — although he added that’s not “entirely fair,” and that industry-minded France could play a key role in boosting the EU’s competitiveness.

Regardless, the frustration has been evident in recent policy disputes. Central and Eastern European countries slammed a batch of trucker reforms, which they billed the “Macron law,” on the grounds that they were deeply protectionist. France also came under fire for its push to establish an EU Capitals Markets Union — the move was perceived as a strategy to bolster the European Securities and Markets Authority, which happens to be in Paris.

France’s steady focus on internal market and industry portfolios stands out amid the five-year flurry of Commission portfolio reshuffles, with a few other patterns.

While larger countries snagged the single market beat, trade briefs went to smaller countries. Lithuania is the only non-Mediterranean country to have been put in charge of oceans or maritime since 2004.

And weaker and less visible mandates like development, equality, culture, multilingualism, research, crisis response, health and social affairs were mostly assigned to smaller countries and late EU-joiners, such as Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Belgium. Still, by chance, Greece’s Stella Kyriakides stint as Health Commissioner during the Covid-19 pandemic proved weaker portfolios could end up being big briefs, given certain circumstances.

In September, when von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners, there was evident disappointment in some EU capitals — despite her claim that this is a Commission of “equals.”

Hungarian opposition MEP Csaba Molnár took Olivér Várhelyi’s Health and Animal Welfare brief as proof that his country had sunk to a position with “zero influence” in the EU.

In Malta, the portfolio of 35-year-old civil servant Glenn Micallef — youth, sport and intergenerational fairness — was derided as one of the least important in the Commission. 

The responsibilities of Bulgaria’s Ekaterina Zaharieva — startups and innovation — were “modest … as expected” and not all that different from her Bulgarian predecessors’ briefs, according to MEP Kristian Vigenin. 

And in Belgium, commentators on both sides of the little country’s language border slammed the political apathy that had led it to drop down the Commission picking order, when Hadja Lahbib was handed a disappointing portfolio on Preparedness, Crisis Management and Equality. Her portfolio has since been expanded with parts of Várhelyi’s crisis management tasks and safeguarding sexual and reproductive health rights.

Incoming commissioners could still find their powers curbed by the way von der Leyen split competences between members of her new team.

Camille Gijs contributed reporting.