Spanish candidate in frame for EU’s top competition job

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Ursula von der Leyen is considering handing a Spanish candidate the EU’s powerful competition portfolio, as the bloc’s political parties and capitals jostle for top roles in the European Commission president’s new team.

Teresa Ribera has emerged as a surprise contender to become Europe’s top antitrust enforcer, people briefed on the negotiations said, giving Spain’s socialist deputy prime minister one of the world’s most influential regulatory jobs.

The EU’s competition arm is responsible for vetting mergers, enforcing antitrust rules and policing state aid, as well as playing a central role in shaping the bloc’s broader industrial policy for the next five years.

Ribera, who had been targeting a role leading the commission’s green agenda, is being considered for the competition role as a means to keep control of the EU’s climate policies within von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s party, according to the people familiar with the negotiations.

The commission president has still not made up her mind on her new team and candidates put forward by other countries, notably Austria, could still end up running the competition unit.

An announcement on von der Leyen’s proposed college of commissioners, expected on September 11, is likely to be postponed as von der Leyen tries to balance competing demands, her spokesman said on Friday. She faces pressures from member states over geographic and gender balance in her new team.

The proposed slate of commissioners must pass through hearings in the European parliament and secure a majority in the chamber before von der Leyen’s new team can take office. 

Senior EU officials say a deal is a way off because of the political sensitivities involved. The Greens, whose votes sealed von der Leyen’s second term, could desert her if they believe she is reining back her “Green Deal”. 

The EPP is wary of giving Ribera, a long-time climate activist and also Spain’s minister for ecological transition, the job of overseeing the Green Deal.

Senior figures believe one of their own will be best placed to convince EPP parliamentarians and government leaders to press on with tough measures to tackle climate change after resistance from farmers and many voters in June’s elections.

“It would be clever to have a smart EPP commissioner in charge of these matters,” a senior EU official said. 

However, they must convince Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his pan-European Party of European Socialists (PES) to accept the job. Ribera is the highest-profile Socialist commissioner nominee.

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” said a third person involved in the discussions. “Spain is aiming for a strong portfolio.”

If appointed, Ribera would succeed Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager, whose decade running the EU’s antitrust regime was marked by a toughening of Brussels’ stance towards Big Tech, and decisions to block several landmark mergers that were billed as a way to create so-called European champions. 

During the election campaign the PES favoured increased industrial subsidies to match those in the US and China, which have lured many EU companies away. 

That would require loosening the EU’s tough state aid rules, designed to level the playing field within the bloc.

It also wanted to weaken merger rules to allow European companies to grow big enough to compete against the biggest corporate players in the US and China. Mario Draghi, Italy’s former prime minister, will echo that demand in a report commissioned by von der Leyen and published on Monday.

Ribera’s possible appointment follows the recent elevation of her former ministerial colleague, Nadia Calviño, to the head of the European Investment Bank.

Calviño, who first made her name as an antitrust enforcer, has pledged to raise the EIB’s lending to the green and defence industries, giving Madrid a strong role in shaping Europe’s industrial strategy. 

A spokesman for Ribera declined to comment on von der Leyen’s intentions. He added: “Vice-president Ribera supports connecting the Green Deal with industrial competitiveness. Ecological transition is the best way to make the industry of the EU competitive against the economies of other global players, such as China or the US.”

Additional reporting by Alice Hancock