Talk:von der Leyen Commission II

Tomaž Vesel political affiliation

Tomaž Vesel is not a member of ALDE. He is a member of Gibanje Svoboda (Freedom Movement), which is not a member of ALDE, but is a part of the Renew Europe, so he is a liberal politican, so his political affiliation should be marked in another way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.159.1.166 (talk) 09:48, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Capital in the title

The von in the title should be capitalised in line with her first commission's article title. ArbDardh (talk) 00:27, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Wording

In the "Commissioners" section, we are first told...

"According to the Treaty on European Union, each member state nominates one Commissioner,"

...but in the second paragraph:

"As she did with her first commission, von der Leyen made a call for member states to each nominate two candidates for the European Commission, a woman and a man."

The difficulty, here, seems to be with the use of the word "nominate" and then maybe with the convoluted process, itself. But it needs to be changed to clarify how the process works. Though there is just one spot for each Member State in the Commission, there doesn't appear to be any actual written rule about the number of candidates a state can proposed to the President and the Council of the EU. I'm not sure how we want to word this, but what I do now is that the paragraphs in this section of the article as currently written directly contradict one another. Perhaps in that second paragraph, we should changed "nominate" to "propose." Criticalthinker (talk) 11:29, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, the number of commissioners per European Party chart doesn't even match with the source. There aren't five independent members, for instance. I will be cleaning up the "Commissioners" section if no one else is interested; I've done my part in trying to engage here on the Talk page. Criticalthinker (talk) 02:00, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal for the "nomination" wording.

Instead I disagree with your argument about the European Party chart. There are 5 independent members in the Commission since the relevant affiliation is with a European political party, not a Political group in the European Parliament. Clairos (talk) 08:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

The reason that the wording is unclear, is because it does not reflect the Treaty on the European Union.

Article 17 states that

[T]he Commission shall consist of a number of members, including its President and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, corresponding to two thirds of the number of Member States, unless the European Council, acting unanimously, decides to alter this number.

The members of the Commission shall be chosen from among the nationals of the Member States on the basis of a system of strictly equal rotation between the Member States, reflecting the demographic and geographical range of all the Member States. This system shall be established unanimously by the European Council in accordance with Article 244 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Notice that the treaty does not limit the number of nominees. As long as it is a strict rotation, the treaty allows for 2, 3 or all of the commissioners to come from the same country. It is up to the Council to make a seperate decission on how the rotation will function. I'm not a 100 % sure, because it is hard to confirm a negative, but I believe that so far, the Council has never agreed on this rotation system. Instead, the Council has consistently opted to increase the number of commissioners to correspond to the number of member states.

I've made an attempt att editing the text, aiming to reflect the complexity of the situation. For better? For worse? OJH (talk) 13:39, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is indeed quite complex. However, I recently came across a summary on EurLex (here) indicating that in 2013 the European Council adopted the decision to have one commissioner per member state (here):

The Commission shall consist of a number of members, including its President and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, equal to the number of Member States.

So, it appears that this is the current rule at this time. Clairos (talk) 16:00, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

This is great @Clairos. But double check that it is still valid, as I have trunkated the Treaty quote above. This is actually the section valid from 1 November 2014 and forward; before that date, a concept similar to what you have described was the Treaty rule. So, before adding this great sources, please make sure whether the 2013 Council decision took aim at the new Juncker Commission (2014-2019, with the above mentioned rule) or at the Barroso Commission (still in office in 2013-2014)! Then edit the crap out of the article!! OJH (talk) 18:22, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you all for all of this discussion and these corrections! It is quite interesting to find that there is no actual requirement for each country to be represented on the Commission and that this appears more a result of tradition. Then again, that would make sense since the Commissioners don't technically represent their member state on the Commission.

In any case, I have one additional request. I've tried on a few other articles dealing with the institutions of the EU to make clear that the Council of the European Union (i.e. "The Council") technically - "by common accord with the President-elect of the Commission" - adopts the list of nominees. If someone could fit that in somewhere in the section we've been talking about, that'd be great. This group was formally adopted yesterday. I'm not exactly sure of the process. I believe this is done by the General Affairs Council configuration, but it doesn't appear that they actually meet to make these kind of decisions, so I'm not sure how they actually do this in a formal sense. Criticalthinker (talk) 12:59, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Criticalthinker, you're absolutely right. I was not able to understand when and how the Council is informed, much less how the adoption of the list is done, so I left that part out, but that's actually wrong. OJH (talk) 19:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

And thank you @Clairos, who solved this, with sources and all! OJH (talk) 19:39, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Got some info back on the Consilium on this which can now probably go into the "Selection of Commissioners" section. The decision to adopt the list of nominees "by common according with the President-elect" is done by written procedure, so outside of a meeting (though, it can be done in a meeting, too, if they so wished). This is a non-legislative act, so it's a procedure that's the "other instrucments" part of the "legislative acts and other instruments”.

With all that said, I guess I'm proposing to move the part about the Council of the EU's role to this first paragraph of the section. While it may seem a very minor part of the process of nomination, I think it's quite an important formal role the Council of the EU has in the process, which also includes European Council and the European Parliament. The proposed College of Commissioners can be sent to the Parliament for review unless the Council of the EU signs off on the President's proposals. IMO, the current sourcing for the info should work. But if there is any wariness about it, I'm sure you can find the information on the process of non-legislative acts in the Treaty. Criticalthinker (talk) 12:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)