Are the proposed new EU aid leaders a good fit for the job?

The European Commission proposed its new leadership for the next five years Tuesday, with a former Czech banker and Belgian foreign minister tapped to lead the development and humanitarian aid portfolios respectively. “The whole college [of commissioners] is committed to competitiveness!” Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, said in Strasbourg, France, at the start of her second term at the helm of the European Union executive. And Tuesday’s announcements made clear that development cooperation will continue to be part of the commission’s attempt — flagged in leaked internal reflections and political guidelines in recent months — to use its official development assistance budget — the world’s third largest, worth $26.9 billion in 2023 — partly for its own economic interests. Von der Leyen proposed Jozef Síkela, the Czech minister of industry and trade as commissioner-designate for international partnerships (the commission’s name for global development work). All commissioners-designate will now prepare for a hearing before the European Parliament, which must confirm Von der Leyen’s picks. Having held leadership positions at Erste Bank in Ukraine, Slovak insurance company Slovenská spořitelna, and then Erste Group Bank AG, the parent company of the Erste Group, Síkela portrayed himself as well-positioned to embrace Von der Leyen’s vision for an openly self-interested development policy. “The International Partnerships portfolio will allow me to focus on strengthening the EU's economic security, diversifying our suppliers of critical raw materials, and opening new markets for European companies,” he tweeted Tuesday. That sounded alarm bells among civil society, however. “This is the aid budget,” María José Romero, policy and advocacy manager at the European Network on Debt and Development, or Eurodad, wrote to Devex by email. “Where is the vision for how the EU can contribute to global equality?” While Celia Cranfield, head of advocacy at CONCORD Europe, argued that “it won’t be possible for the European Union to keep its leadership role in supporting partners to achieve sustainable development if it only focuses on its own economic interests.” That reflects the tension in recent years between Von der Leyen’s Global Gateway investment plan to try and compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative by promoting EU companies’ investments abroad on the one hand, and NGOs, some EU member state officials and members of the European Parliament on the other. The latter says the commission’s commercial approach to development is neglecting its obligation under the EU treaties to make poverty eradication the prime objective of its development work. Outgoing Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen has been the global face of Global Gateway since its launch in late 2021. But as a social democrat with a background in civil society, she also championed traditional development topics such as education and the fight against inequalities. Síkela’s nomination may be a sign that Von der Leyen wants more full-throated backing for European economic interests abroad, particularly in the lead-up to the release of the commission’s draft 2028-2034 budget and subsequent negotiations with the Parliament and EU states. Tomáš Prouza, vice president of the Czech Chamber of Commerce, former Czech state secretary for EU affairs, and Síkela’s principal EU adviser during the Czech presidency of the Council of the EU in 2022, told Devex by email Tuesday that his former boss would approach the new job with “a fresh mind as he comes from the outside, so he is not wedded to any specific area of the portfolio.” “Jozef comes from [an] international finance background, so understands very well what businesses need to expand into new markets and will be very practical in getting the Global Gateway up and running,” Prouza wrote. “He will be very good in coordination with G7 and G20, he will understand the work on sustainable finance.” The new commissioner-designate for humanitarian aid meanwhile is Hadja Lahbib, a former journalist who has been Belgian foreign minister since 2022. The commission’s humanitarian budget is far smaller than that for development, though it remains critical for many INGOs and United Nations agencies. Von der Leyen wrote that she expects Lahbib to take on the role not only of commissioner for preparedness and crisis management, but also a commissioner for equality — a huge brief that stretches from developing an EU road map for women’s rights and a new anti-racism strategy to contributing to an action plan on cyberbullying, as well as managing natural disasters such as fires and floods in Europe, plus humanitarian spending abroad. One area to watch is Von der Leyen’s instruction to Lahbib to try and bring about “a more equitable responsibility among donors” — long a bugbear of Brussels officials. “I also want you to develop a more strategic approach to the humanitarian supply chains, encouraging joined-up approaches and cost-savings.” That could spell a fight with the U.N., which is sometimes the EU’s only option for distributing aid. Both Síkela and Lahbib will report to the EU high representative for foreign affairs and vice-president Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister with a reputation as a strong opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Olivér Várhely, the Hungarian who used his 2019-2024 job as neighborhood commissioner to champion spending in the EU’s immediate region over that in sub-Saharan Africa, and to attack the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was relegated to the far less prestigious post of commissioner for health and animal welfare.