In Denmark we usually have coalition governments, and when they are constituted you can see who’s important and who’s not from the ministries they are given.
Some ministries are more important - Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs - and some are less important.
But which commission posts are the most important and powerful? I want to take a more active interest in EU politics, but that requires me to know what to look for :D
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It’s not an obvious exercise. How “important” is migration and home affairs compared to the internal market? The internal market is certainly at the core of the competences of the EU, but maybe it’s in the less established areas that more interesting developments are happening. Furthermore, they might suddenly become extremely relevant. Nobody predicted how important DG SANTE would become in 2020, for example.
One indicator of importance might be staff size. I struggle to find a good and up to date figure right now, so I’ll make do with a pretty bad and outdated one from 2020, showing the size of the staff under each Commissioner at that point in time. Johannes Hahn runs the largest operation as the DG of budget and administration. Budget is unquestionably important. Administration as well, but it might produce more staff than power.
The Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth comes in second place. The Commissioner for International Partnerships comes third.
So these positions run the largest operations. Linking that to power is probably somewhat misguided - it would indicate that all three of these relatively anonymous positions were more important than von der Leyen. Entering a position with a lot of staff might even decrease your power, as you are forced into a role that might have more to do with management and less to do with politics; furthermore, if the field is already well-developed in the EU, it might not be where central developments are happening going forwards.
A better indicator could be to go through the Directorate-Generals under the control of the different Commissioners. The Commissioner of the Internal Market, for example, is also responsible for for the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space. That might be important these days.
In the traditional competences of the EU, the DG for for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries would be considered very important. These days, and especially on this platform, people might be more interested in the DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology.
Wherever Union competences are weak and/or anonymous, there’s greater room to innovate and to surprise us by striking some crazy deal. In politicized issues that we intuitively care about, the Commissioner’s power will also be relatively weaker as they are kept under strict control. So there’s an inherent tension: The fact that a Commissioner is widely considered as being important might actually make them less relevant by making it harder for them to pursue an agenda. They might end up just striking smallest common denominator compromises with all involved actors, and have little to say themselves for the outcomes as such.
So that’s a messy non-answer, and I guess nobody is any wiser. But it’s difficult, in my opinion, to give a very clearly defined answer which positions are important and which are not.
Thank you for your perspective :)
So these positions run the largest operations. Linking that to power is probably somewhat misguided
I guess, but then again - how much of a budget you have does say something about how much muscle you have, right? In a very real sense money equals power projection.
The Commission is basically two completely different things. Actually it’s probably more than two things, but the way we often talk about it, it plays two key roles.
One is that of a bureaucratic body that runs the union, delegates funds, oversees the implementation of EU legislation, submits observations to cases before the CJEU, posts content to @[email protected], and that kind of jazz. This is where there’s a huge number of employees, and it’s where a lot of EU funds are spent. We probably wouldn’t be talking here if it wasn’t for the Next Generation Internet programme, which is a part of Horizon Europe, which is seen as a scientific research initiative. So the Fediverse has a pretty direct relationship to things going on in the bureaucracy that I assume is positioned under the Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth.
This is, however, largely bureaucratic. Doesn’t mean it’s not important, but it’s not where the juicy political decisions are made.
The other role is that of a executive body. In the separation of powers in the EU,
In its executive role, budget and staff might matter less. What matters is the political deals you can strike. Resources might help you craft better proposals that the Council and Parliament then needs to accept before it can be signed off to law, but the relationship to resources here is not that obvious.
Then again, another bureaucratic role of the Commission is when power has been delegated to it to decide on a specific area, for example how to regulate a specific type of products. This is bureaucratic as hell, but it also gives direct decision-making power to the Commission to just decide pretty much as they please within a limited competence. So bureaucrats could absolutely mean power as well, albeit maybe not a very sexy type of power.
I think an important one to look out for is who are the vice presidents. Those (and their posts) are probably the more important ones.
Other important people are the Parliament president and the president of the Council (roughly equivalent to a country’s senate). Understanding the three bodies of Commission, Parliament, and Council is the lowest hanging fruit towards understanding the EU in general.
