EC President Ursula von der Leyen is now likely to lead the male-dominated commission, after all 25 nominations were submitted.
After her re-election in July, von der Leyen asked EU countries to nominate a man and a woman to ensure gender balance in the Commission.
The only exception made to this request was for governments that re-nominated an incumbent EC member, as France, Hungary and Latvia have done.
Ms Von der Leyen asked EU countries to nominate one male and one female candidate each to achieve gender equality, but more than half of EU governments have only nominated one male candidate.
If the nominations do not change and the candidates eventually succeed in entering the EU executive, it is possible that about two-thirds of the members of the new EC cabinet will be men.
Only Bulgaria offered male and female nominations. Sofia announced on Friday that it is nominating the candidacies of former foreign minister Yekaterina Zakhariyeva and former environment minister Julian Popov.
Currently, 12 of the 27 members of the Commission are women. The Commission is the powerful executive body of the EU. It proposes new legislation and enforces EU treaties and employs around 32,000 people.
Despite von der Leyen’s likely annoyance, EU countries are not legally bound to comply with her request to nominate both a man and a woman.
Gender equality is not explicitly mentioned in the EU treaties, and the Commission aims to reflect the demographics and geography of EU member states in general.
However, it is still possible that, for example, some candidates will not receive the necessary approval after deliberations in the European Parliament’s committees.
Then the respective EU countries will have to propose a new member of the Commission. U. von der Leyen could also ask them to reconsider their candidacies in advance.
2024-09-03 15:23:21