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Ursula von der Leyen will preside over the most rightwing European Commission in decades, as EU lawmakers are set to approve her team for the next five years on Wednesday.
The German’s slate of commissioners is expected to receive the necessary majority of votes cast from a broad coalition in the European parliament ranging from the Greens to the rightwing Brothers of Italy.
Almost half of the 27 commissioners, including von der Leyen, are from the centre-right, one is an ultraconservative and one is from the far right.
By comparison, in the outgoing team, 12 commissioners were rightwing politicians, and only five out of 20 in the 1999 executive led by Romano Prodi.
Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People’s party, told journalists on Tuesday that the vote would demonstrate the “stability” of political leadership in the EU assembly after elections in June in which voters swung rightward.
The far-right Patriots group, which includes the party of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, is the third-biggest in the EU parliament. They are followed by the European Conservatives and Reformists which includes the Brothers of Italy of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Both groups will now have a commissioner each, along with 13 from the EPP, including von der Leyen.
The EPP has already allied itself with the Patriots and the ECR on several occasions, embracing their harder stance on migration and hostility to green policies.
The rightwing pivot has sparked outrage from the pro-EU parties to the left of the EPP, which in July had struck a pact to back von der Leyen, and which threatened to delay the whole process.
The Greens, the Liberal Renew party and the Socialists at one point threatened to block the approval of Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi and Italy’s Raffaele Fitto but in the end backed down. Fitto, in charge of regional spending, will be one of six vice-presidents. Várhelyi will be commissioner for health and animal welfare.
The leftist rebellion in turn threatened the appointment of Spain’s Teresa Ribera, who will hold the powerful competition and antitrust portfolio. The Socialist, currently serving as Spanish environment minister, endured a rough ride from the EPP over her alleged responsibility for hundreds of deaths in flooding.
The new team will take office on December 1.
Von der Leyen has pledged to boost the EU’s defence industry and improve the bloc’s competitiveness amid widespread fears over global trade tensions prompted by Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.
On Wednesday she told lawmakers that the new commission will hold talks with the European car industry to help it through a “deep and disruptive transition”.
Vehicle makers in Europe including Ford and Volkswagen have announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past month as they struggle to compete with falling demand, competition from cheaper Chinese imports and strict EU emissions rules due to come into force next year.
Von der Leyen has also promised to stand by Ukraine despite signs of ebbing support in some EU countries and in the US, and preserve the green energy transition that was the hallmark policy of her first term in office.
That pledge, and the appointment this week of former Green leader Philippe Lamberts as her adviser, has convinced a majority of MEPs to back her. Lamberts will work with industry and NGOs on hitting the EU’s goal of being climate neutral by 2050.
Von der Leyen described the Greens as “part of the pro-European majority” in parliament that she wanted to continue working with on reaching the bloc’s climate targets and cutting red tape.
But those policies have become increasingly unpopular as the bloc grapples with slow growth, deindustrialisation and political stasis.
The leaders of its two most powerful countries, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron, are deeply unpopular and head weak governments, with early elections due in Germany in February and in France potentially later next year.
Trump’s pledge to impose tariffs on imports will further test the bloc’s unity just as it grapples with a surge in cheap imports from China.
Nicolai von Ondarza, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the rightwing majority in all EU institutions was making it hard for the centre left and Greens to mount any meaningful opposition.
“I expect them to protest loudly in public, but still strive to find majorities with the EPP in practice,” he said.
Additional reporting by Alice Hancock in Brussels
Data visualisation by Steven Bernard
