In the current commission, Italian Paolo Gentiloni is the economic commissioner. His assignment, which includes responsibility for hundreds of billions of euros in the EU's reconstruction fund after the coronavirus pandemic, may now be taken over by his compatriot Raffaele Fitto, writes Die Welt, citing sources among EU diplomats and people in the commission.
Fitto, currently Italy's European Minister, is generally tipped to become one of at least six vice presidents of the commission. The others are expected to be Estonia's Kaja Kallas, France's Thierry Breton, Spain's Teresa Ribera, Latvia's Valdis Dombrovskis, and Slovakia's Maros Sefcovic.
President von der Leyen has simultaneously managed to persuade Romania to nominate EU parliamentarian Roxana Minzatu instead of colleague Victor Negrescu. Since Belgium has also nominated a woman, Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, the new commission appears to have at least nine female members.
Who gets which area of responsibility is expected to be clear at the earliest next week.
The following persons have been nominated to the incoming EU commission, which, as usual, will consist of one person from each member state:
Women (9): President Ursula von der Leyen (Germany), Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas (Estonia), Maria Luís Albuquerque (Portugal), Hadja Lahbib (Belgium), Roxana Minzatu (Romania), Teresa Ribera (Spain), Jessika Roswall (Sweden), Dubravka Suica (Croatia), and Henna Virkkunen (Finland).
Men (17): Thierry Breton (France), Magnus Brunner (Austria), Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvia), Raffaele Fitto (Italy), Christophe Hansen (Luxembourg), Wopke Hoekstra (Netherlands), Dan Jørgensen (Denmark), Costas Kadis (Cyprus), Andrius Kubilius (Lithuania), Michael McGrath (Ireland), Glenn Micallef (Malta), Maros Sefcovic (Slovakia), Piotr Serafin (Poland), Jozef Síkela (Czech Republic), Apostolos Tzitzikostas (Greece), Olivér Várhelyi (Hungary), and Tomaz Vesel (Slovenia).
Bulgaria has nominated both a man and a woman: Julian Popov and Ekaterina Zacharieva.
