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 should replace Italianer as director-general for competition: Johannes Laitenberger. That is the appointment that poses the most questions about the nature of the current administration.
If the Italianer decision was a slight surprise, it was because he is cautious and conservative, which it was thought would not be to the taste of Martin Selmayr, the head of the private office of Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. But since Italianer had been tipped for the top job ever since he was deputy secretary-general, his appointment can hardly be classed as a shock.
The promotion of Laitenberger, however, is more contentious, chiefly because it feeds the worst fears of those who think that Selmayr is running the Commission. The similarities and overlaps in the careers of Laitenberger and Selmayr are indeed hard to avoid, since both are German Christian Democrat lawyers with Luxembourg connections.
Laitenberger became known to the outside world by working closely with José Manuel Barroso, the two-term Commission president (2004-14), first as his spokesman, then as head of his private office. But before that, Laitenberger had worked in the private office of Viviane Reding (1999-2004), ultimately becoming its head. Selmayr became spokesman for Reding (while Laitenberger was speaking for Barroso) and then headed her private office.
On the face of it, Laitenberger once helped Selmayr’s career and now it is Selmayr’s turn to repay the compliment, though perhaps the more generous conspiracy theorists might concede that both men are able and hard-working.
Nevertheless, the appointment of a German Christian Democrat to head the Commission’s competition department is bound to feed the whispering that Juncker’s Commission will pander to those German media that backed the Spitzenkandidaten process for choosing a Commission president.
Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, hardly helped Laitenberger’s cause by admitting — when asked about the shortage of women among senior positions in the competition department — that she had not followed Juncker’s instructions to put forward three names for director-general. She had not done so, she said, because she wanted to keep Italianer in the post. That amounted to an admission that she had not nominated Laitenberger, though she praised his experience (which includes less than a year in DG Competition) and his knowledge of “how the Commission works.”
Vestager’s admission that she had “misbehaved” and disobeyed Juncker’s instructions suggests she was not in the loop as to the likelihood of Catherine Day leaving, which is what put the post of secretary-general in play. There is a school of thought that Juncker and Selmayr wanted Day to stay on for a year or two. Another version is that story was itself a smokescreen aimed at preventing Day from becoming a lame-duck secretary-general. Either way, the essential point is that Day’s departure gave the Juncker camp the room to promote Laitenberger.
There is one other area of the reshuffle where Selmayr’s thumbprints are obvious, since he has taken a close interest in telecoms ever since Reding held that portfolio. DG CNECT, the department that is supposed to be advancing the much talked-about digital single market is being shaken up. Robert Madelin, the current DG, is being moved to the president’s think-tank as a special adviser on innovation and Zoran Stancic, a long-term deputy DG, will become head of the Commission’s representation in his native Slovenia. That leaves a clear hand for Roberto Viola, who joined the Commission only in 2012, having previously been an Italian telecoms regulator and before that a scientist with, among other things, the European Space Agency.
Kristalina Georgieva, the Commission vice-president with responsibility for human resources issues, took care to say nice things about Madelin, extolling the new-found importance of special advisers, saying he would recharge his batteries and leaving open the possibility of his later appointment to another DG role. Nonetheless, the brutality of office politics says that the three DGs who are to become advisers — Madelin, Karl Falkenberg and Claus Sorensen – are out of favor. What is noteworthy is that the new regime is not resorting to the old practice of Article 50 of the staff regulation — i.e., a generous early retirement for exceptional reasons.
Whiff of anti-climax
Those directors-general who still have upward momentum are Lowri Evans, who moves from DG MARE to sort out the mess that is DG GROW; Martine Reicherts (DG EAC) and Stephen Quest (DG TAXUD). Those who have levelled out, or worse, include Daniel Calleja Crespo (goes to DG ENV) and Joao Aguiar Machado (DG MARE) and Xavier Prats Monné (from DG EAC to DG SANTE). It would be hard to portray this reshuffle as kind to southern Europeans or those from new member states.
Both Georgieva and Juncker expressed regret that it had not been possible to promote more women to senior posts, even though each commissioner was supposed to nominate at least one woman for each DG slot. From the outside, it was obvious that there were not enough women in the upper-middle ranks, i.e. at the level of director and deputy director-general to make big changes. Juncker set himself up for failure on this score.
Indeed, the reshuffle has a whiff of anti-climax about it. Although there are significant promotions for a younger generation (Olivier Guersent, Henrik Hololei), it is less far-reaching than some had feared or hoped. Three DG posts have been left unfilled. They, and some DDG posts, will be advertized.
Some directors-general have been left in post who under the previous administrations would have been moved. A commitment to rotate senior managers was introduced at the end of the 1990s as part of a program of administrative reform in response to accusations of nepotism and cronyism.
The pendulum has swung back: commissioners are encouraged to choose who they want to work with – the most obvious example is that Katarina Mathernova, who was deputy director general (DDG) for regional policy, becomes DDG NEAR, effectively following Johannes Hahn, previously commissioner for regional policy and now commissioner for the neighborhood.
Similarly, the convention that the commissioner and director-general should not be of the same nationality has been dispensed with. Frans Timmermans, the Commission vice-president who has charge of the secretariat-general, has a compatriot in Italianer as secretary-general. Martin Verwey, another Dutchman, has been appointed to a DG post in the secretariat-general, in charge of structural reform, which itself dispenses with a convention that the head and deputy head of a department should not be of the same nationality.
These changes have been made, for the most part, deftly. Georgieva, Timmermans and Selmayr gave themselves room to maneuver down the road, delicately dispensing with some of what has constrained earlier administrations. But there was nothing subtle or delicate about the choice of director-general for competition.
Tim King, the editor of European Voice from 2009 to 2015, is a contributing writer at POLITICO.
Correction: European Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s second term ended in 2014. An earlier version of this article misstated the date.