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.