Commission to vet Murdoch’s pay-TV bid
According to officials at the media company Bertelsmann, BSkyB’s investment in Germany’s main pay-TV channel, Premiere, should be finalised by the end of June and notified to the Commission before the...
View ArticleNew faces: the Commission cabinets
The notable exceptions were Rocco Buttiglione, whose appointment was so fiercely criticized, and the new president himself. Commissioners can appoint six or seven administrator-grade officials to their...
View ArticleCommission cabinets: second time around…
But Parliament’s vote last Thursday to approve the revised EU executive cleared the way for commissioners to complete their administrative teams. In comparison with the draft list of cabinet members...
View ArticleMovers & Shakers
Poul Skytte Christoffersen, head of cabinet for Mariann Fischer Boel, European commissioner for agriculture, will become Denmark’s permanent representative to the EU on 1 May. Christoffersen did the...
View ArticleNew budget DG at European Commission
The college of European commissioners has appointed Nadia Maria Calviño Santamaria as the next director-general for budget. She is to replace Hervé Jouanjean of France when he retires later this year...
View ArticleEuropean Commission: four senior appointments
The European Commission has appointed Nadia Calviño as the next director-general for budget to replace Hervé Jouanjean when he retires. Calviño is currently a deputy director-general for the internal...
View ArticleGuersent re-assigned to internal market role
The European Commission has appointed Olivier Guersent as deputy director-general in the department for internal market and services, to replace Nadia Calviño. That represents a change in direction for...
View ArticleGuersent re-assigned to internal market role
The European Commission has appointed Olivier Guersent as deputy director-general in the department for internal market and services, to replace Nadia Calviño. That represents a change in direction for...
View ArticleOlivier Guersent – Practical negotiator
It is common, when French Eurocrats of a certain age get together, for them to discuss their experiences of compatriots who were leading figures in the European Commission in the last decades of the...
View ArticleDawn of the age of Selmayr
The most important decision announced in the reshuffle of senior managers in the European Commission is not that Alexander Italianer will be the next secretary-general. Rather, it is the choice of who...
View ArticleEU finance official: UK will have to survive as third country
The U.K. will not be part of the single market after it officially exits the EU and will have to access clients in the bloc like any other “third country,” a senior European Commission financial...
View ArticleCommission downplays City’s cliff-edge Brexit worries
The European Commission’s top financial services officials today shrugged off U.K. fears that Brexit could disrupt the continuity of cross-border insurance and derivative contracts and that the bloc’s...
View ArticleEurope failed to tame Google. Can the US do any better?
The Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Google offers the United States an opportunity to succeed where Europe stumbled. European Union regulators investigated and fined the Silicon Valley...
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The French people Europe needs to know
French diplomats, civil servants and policymakers will play a key role in delivering set priorities for the country’s presidency of the Council of the EU, which started on January 1. Here are some of...
View ArticleEU ramps up Big Tech clampdown without 3 top antitrust investigators
The European Commission is starting the next round of its intensifying face-off with Big Tech with a handicap. Three top competition officials, who helped lead high-profile probes into Google,...
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Thierry Breton: Brussels’ bulldozer digs in against US
Thierry Breton is winning the war of ideas in Brussels. The ex-CEO is a political whirlwind with a gigantic portfolio as internal market chief, the backing of French President Emmanuel Macron and lots...
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The total eclipse of Margrethe Vestager
Photo illustration by Lynne Brouwer for POLITICO BRUSSELS — Margrethe Vestager is leaving the stage. Her smile fades, translators put down their headsets, the camera feed stops. The woman who was once...
View ArticleMake the single market ‘sexy,’ Italy’s ex-PM urges EU leaders
BRUSSELS — Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy, is facing a tall order: Make everyone fall in love with the single market. It’s a task former Commission President Jacques Delors famously said...
View ArticleGetting flirty! Are the UK and EU falling into bed with each other again?
LONDON — She’s the British official who’s good at knocking bankers’ heads together. He’s the twinkly-eyed Irishman who’s an old hand at navigating the twists and turns of EU policymaking. Since Brexit...
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