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France and Italy are jostling for a senior economic post in the next European Commission, a fight heightened by personal animosity between the two countries’ leaders.
The EU’s 27 leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday for a crunch summit on the bloc’s top jobs, where Ursula von der Leyen needs their support to secure a second term as commission president.
Capitals including Paris and Rome have signalled their portfolio preferences within the next commission as a price for their support.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are at loggerheads as they are both vying for the same prize: a powerful commission vice-president in charge of trade, competition and industrial policy.
“The main problem that we have today for the top jobs is that Meloni and Macron probably want the same things in terms of portfolios in the next commission,” said Gilles Gressani, director of French journal Le Grand Continent.
“They definitely want to appear as the leaders of the next phase and at the same time they’re both quite fragile,” he added, referring to Macron’s defeat by his far-right rivals in European parliamentary polls earlier this month, prompting him to call a snap national election, and Meloni’s isolation at an EU leaders’ gathering following that vote.
Von der Leyen’s path to a second five-year term was cleared when her centre-right European People’s party won the most seats in the EU assembly. The centre-left Socialists and Democrats came second, and have put forward Portugal’s former prime minister António Costa as the next president of the European Council, while Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, of Macron’s liberal Renew group, is the frontrunner to be the EU’s next chief diplomat.
But in addition to agreeing to those three top jobs, EU leaders are considering a complex matrix of commissioner appointments that must satisfy party affiliations, geographical balance and crude political leverage.
The distribution of national portfolios in the 27-strong college of commissioners is officially von der Leyen’s prerogative, but in practice is the result of diplomatic arm-wrestling and political favours.
Meloni, who is president of the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists, has demanded that her party’s strong showing in the election — in addition to Italy’s clout as the bloc’s third-largest economy — be reflected in the jobs negotiations.
She said she expected “Italy to be recognised for the role it deserves in terms of the portfolios that will be discussed when the commission is formed”.
Italian officials have listed trade and competition — areas where Brussels has the sole competence — as well as the bloc’s common budget and industry as areas of interest.
Those are broadly the same areas coveted by France.
France is interested in a senior commission role with the power to control the policy and financial levers to deliver on industrial policy, according to a diplomat briefed on the negotiations.
Defence, an emerging priority for the EU which von der Leyen has pledged to create a dedicated post, could be part of the industrial strategy controlled by such a post.
France’s current commissioner, Thierry Breton, is in charge of industrial policy including defence as part of his single market portfolio.
Neither Paris nor Rome want the commissioner for economy, which Italy currently holds and which France held between 2014 and 2019. That job monitors compliance with EU debt and deficit rules, which both countries are in breach of.
Both countries are highly indebted economies with a declining industrial base and an ageing population. Their interests often align on policy issues from reforming the bloc’s budget rules to allowing more tie-ups of large European companies
But over the past two years their leaders’ bilateral relationship has soured.
Macron, a liberal, and Meloni have had a tempestuous relationship ever since the former member of a neo-fascist youth organisation came to power in Rome in the autumn of 2022.
Ties frayed after Meloni’s government refused to allow a French-run charity ship carrying migrants rescued from the Mediterranean to disembark all its passengers, and forced the ship to sail to France.
Relations reached a nadir in recent weeks. Meloni accused Macron of using a recent G7 summit that she hosted for electioneering, while France granted a knighthood to a prominent Italian writer who has publicly accused Meloni of censorship.
“They’ve picked each other as their main antagonist character [opponent],” said Gressani.