EU chief unveils her new team after a long and bumpy road, women get top roles

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00:00is our Europe editor Armen Georgian who joins us here on set. Armen take us through that first of

00:05all we've got a lot of the main names have been coming out exactly who is where and why it's been

00:10so complicated to fit everybody in as it were. Yeah that's right it's it's really hard because

00:15you've got to get a balance of geography of political party and gender so it's an almost

00:23impossible balancing act and it's taken Ursula von der Leyen a lot of time to bring this all

00:28together so she started this press conference by sort of focusing on one issue which has been

00:35very dominant and that's gender balance she said there are 11 women in this new commission which

00:40is 40% so not as much as she hoped but better than what she started out with which was only 22%

00:47women based on the initial nominations. One interesting thing she's done Stuart is she's

00:52kind of flipped the balance between the sort of main members of the college and as it were the top

00:59six even though she says everybody is equal but of course there are these prestigious roles which

01:05is the executive vice presidency and there are six positions within those executive vice

01:11presidencies and what she's done is if she's basically kind of put more women in those roles

01:17to make up for the lack of women elsewhere she also put in more socialists into those top six

01:23than there are in the rest of the college again to make up to some extent for the political imbalance

01:29if you take the political parties as a whole what you've got in this commission is 13 members of the

01:35European People's Party that's the party of Ursula von der Leyen so the centre-right you've got

01:41four socialists and five Renew, Renew being the centrist party which for example President Macron's

01:49MEPs are part of that group in the European Parliament so that's the reason I mentioned

01:54this Stuart is because the balance of political parties within the European Commission is actually

01:59quite different from the European Parliament because if you take the European Parliament

02:03you've got the socialists who are the second largest group based on the results of the European

02:08election on June the 9th but if you look at the European Commission the socialists actually have

02:13hold fewer portfolios than Renew whereas in the European Parliament Renew is a smaller block

02:18than the socialists so the political balances are quite different in the European Commission

02:23than they are in the European Parliament and that I think sets up some interesting questions about

02:28what will happen during the hearings because all of these commissioners have to go through

02:33hearings in the European Parliament to be confirmed in their jobs. You use that phrase

02:37interesting questions one of the interesting questions over the last 24 hours is who is going

02:41to be France's nomination because it was Thierry Breton but he quit suddenly didn't he after

02:48he accused Ursula von der Leyen of pushing Paris to ditch him so instead yesterday Emmanuel Macron

02:54nominated Stéphane Séjourné and there is a top job for him isn't there? Yes Stéphane Séjourné

02:59does indeed get one of these six executive vice presidents positions and Ursula von der Leyen

03:09very complimentary about him saying she knows him very well that she worked with him closely

03:13when he was head of the Renew block in the European Parliament for five years and she's

03:20obviously trying to draw a line under this drama surrounding Thierry Breton the former French

03:26commissioner and and completely dodging the reporter's question frankly when she was asked

03:31did you push him out did you ask France to withdraw his name at the last minute not surprisingly she

03:39didn't answer that and said well it was President Macron who put forward Stéphane Séjourné yeah

03:45but what happened just before that well she she didn't say anything about that one yeah exactly

03:50well at least for now anyway it seems to be sorted out what about I mean she started off

03:55not before she talks about the names just talking about the general strategy what the whole

04:00parliament should be aiming at over the next four years yeah so a couple of things there

04:06so she sort of outlined the priorities which are competitiveness she said decarbonisation

04:13and digitalisation so those are sort of the three top bullet points I think I would have

04:21taken away from the start of her press conference and also she kept stressing this issue of

04:28coordination between members of the commission because she was asked in the press conference

04:32well aren't they just going to tread on each other's toes because some of them have very

04:36similar or overlapping portfolios so who's going to actually be making the decisions

04:41she didn't have a clear answer on that as to well who actually is the final arbiter she just

04:47stressed this sort of principle of collegiality but also the fact that everything all these

04:54policies affect each other and in that sense to sort of underline that point she stressed the

05:00report which has got a lot of attention Stuart in the recent days which is by Mario Draghi the

05:07former Italian prime minister who talked about how we need all these policies in Europe that

05:12really support each other because digitalisation is so closely linked to say carbonisation which

05:19in turn is linked to the green transition so all these policies are very very closely

05:28interlinked so that she was trying to get that across I think in this press conference but

05:32it still doesn't really answer the questions well when you have egos involved and people trying to

05:38impose themselves in their new jobs who's actually going to make the final decision

05:43Armin thanks very much Armin Georgian our Europe editor they're stirring us through those

05:47announcements that Ursula von der Leyen has been making

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