Commission shakes up top management

But Juncker says the new roster of senior staffers still includes too few women.

The European Commission announced a reshuffling of its senior management positions on Wednesday, replacing not only the institution’s top staffer but also key officials in a dozen different departments.

First among the changes: Alexander Italianer will become the Commission’s next secretary general, replacing Catherine Day, who has held the position for the last 10 years.

Vice President Kristalina Georgieva announced the new lineup of the Commission’s top staffers, the directors-general of its departments. The moves, effective September 1, put in place the final piece of an EU leadership puzzle that has been forming since European elections in May 2014.

Eleven current directors-general will change departments or take on other assignments in the new structure. An additional eight deputy DGs have been promoted to top jobs.

Georgieva said the new DG ranks will include seven women, an increase of two over the current roster (and now 20 percent of the overall group). Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, according to Georgieva, described the situation as “unsatisfactory” and said more work needs to be done to give women more prominent jobs in the Commission.

Georgieva herself promised to do better and said “call me in six or eight months,” indicating she planned to push for remaining vacancies to filled by a higher proportion of women.

“There are still too few women among our senior managers,” Juncker said in a statement. “It remains my firm intention to change that during my mandate.”

Day, who received a rare standing ovation from Commissioners at their meeting Wednesday, wrote her colleagues saying “The time has come for me to move on to the next stage of my life. The President has accepted my wish to retire.”

According to Commission sources, Day had pushed to leave despite efforts to entice her to stay longer and persistent speculation she would remain in post.

Known by colleagues in the Berlaymont as “Catherine Day and Night,” the outgoing secretary general will be remembered as a level-headed, efficient and sometimes brusque force within the corridors of power.

Colleagues recall her answering emails to more junior staff well past midnight and often immediately. One former staffer says he received no more than a short nod while waiting for the elevator on his final day in her team.

The Dutch brigade

Italianer will be the first non-Anglophone mother-tongue official to hold the post of secretary general in 15 years (Day and her predecessor, David O’Sullivan, are both Irish). Italianer’s Dutch nationality is already a cause of controversy, however.

Spanish officials are already said to be complaining that as Jeroen Dijsselbloem campaigns for reappointment as head of the Eurogroup — over Spanish Finance Minister Luis de Guindos — another Dutch national has won a top EU post.

Frans Timmermans is already the most powerful commissioner with an effective veto over many policies, and the Dutch government will take over the rotating presidency of the European Council for six months in January 2016.

Senior Commission sources who have worked with both Day and Italianer say the move makes sense. “He is a good choice,” one official said. “He used to be the Deputy Sec-Gen dealing with the Council, which is the key link we need now. He was in the President’s Cabinet [in the Jacques Santer Commission] so he knows how it works and won’t be afraid to say no to advisers.”

Changes due to issues

In creating the new lineup of directors-general, commissioners ended up leaving more than half of the current team in place.

The degree of stability surprised both insiders and external observers alike, given that all commissioners were expected to nominate a list of three preferred candidates for the next five years, and the directors-generals themselves are subject to a “mobility” policy based on them moving every five years.

Georgieva said the reason that so many other DGs were left in their current posts (23) is because the Commission is dealing with an unusual number of sensitive files in 2015, such as migration. The director-general in charge of the migration department, Matthias Ruete, even had his retirement specially extended in order to preserve the status quo.

The Commission’s decision to preserve continuity in key positions also means that several other officials will not change jobs, including: Marco Buti at DG Economic and Financial Affairs, Dominique Ristori at DG Energy, and Jos Delbeke at DG Climate.

Among those getting promotions from deputy director-general to top jobs are: Johannes Laitenberger to DG Competition; Olivier Guersent at Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union; Monique Pariat at DG ECHO (Humanitarian Affairs); Marianne Klingbeil (at DG Regulatory Scrutiny); and Martine Reicherts at DG General Education and Culture.

The data protection file will remain without a permanent DG in charge of it for months to come as the position is externally advertised. Vivi Michou, currently the acting DG, is moving to the Secretariat-General, mostly likely to one of the three deputy secretary-general posts that must be filled.

Faull Britannia

Other key appointments announced Wednesday:

Longtime Commission staffer Jonathan Faull, currently the DG for internal market and services, moves to a new director-general position leading a task force responsible for strategic issues related to the U.K. referendum, reporting directly to Juncker.

Click Here: Maori All Blacks Store

DG Connect Director-General Robert Madelin will now be a special adviser on innovation, reporting directly to Juncker. Madelin has clashed recently with Juncker’s chief of staff Martin Selmayr on the abolition of the post of Chief Scientific Adviser, and over net neutrality and telecoms reforms.

Georgieva made a point of telling reporters that the Madelin shift “doesn’t mean he has left being a Director-General for ever. If anyone can do this job it is Robert.”

Vestager disappointed

It is not often that the European commissioner with the most executive power, Magrethe Vestager, fails to get her way. Wednesday was one of those days. The commissioner made the extraordinary admission that she had lobbied to keep Italianer at DG Competition, but was rebuffed, and consequently failed to even submit a list of preferred candidates to Juncker.

She will now be working with a new director-general, Laitenberger, with a distinctly different style and temperament, who was never in her considerations.

Vestager was not the only one scratching her head over the personnel moves Wednesday. From key commissioner teams down to the directors and heads of unit who report to the top-tier Eurocrats, no one seemed prepared for the announcements.

The press conference began late and official materials contained incomplete lists. By mid-afternoon a “Frequently Asked Questions” document was circulating internally in the Commission but was not released to journalists despite requests, leaving open questions about which remaining vacancies would be externally advertised and which filled by internal loyalists.

The persistent gender gap

With the departure of Day at the top of the staff pyramid, only one of the major Commission departments will be led by a woman: Lowri Evans at DG Growth. Other top departments — the Secretariat-General, Competition, Economic and Financial Affairs, Trade, Energy and Digital — are all led by men, as are the departments with the three biggest budgets, Regional Policy, Agriculture and Research.

The European Women’s Lobby has slammed the Commission for what seems the certain likelihood it will miss its own target of 40 percent women in senior and middle management by 2019.

“Even the Afghan Parliament has 27.7 percent women,” said Joanna Maycock, head of the group. “If Afghanistan can do it, surely the EU can.”

It will take up to six months to fill a string of vacancies left by today’s incomplete reshuffle. Despite leaving more than half the directors-general in post and spending more than three months on shifting the rest, the following jobs remain open: Directors-General for Justice, Intepretation and Publications.

Deputy DG positions are empty at the departments for Agriculture, Digital, Communications, Economics, Financial Services, Justice, the Legal Service. Also, three deputy director-general posts remain unfilled at the secretariat-general department.

Who’s out

In the end there will be just two gold watches handed out at the end of August: one for Day and one for Heinz Zourek, who leaves the tax department.

The three sidelined directors-general are Madelin, Karl-Friedrich Falkenberg (DG Environment) and Claus Sørensen (until recently Communication). Zoran Stancic also of CONNECT will return to Slovenia to run the relatively small Commission office there.

This story has been changed to correct the current job of Jonathan Faull and the cabinet in which Alexander Italianer served.