Top of the pecking order with executive vice-president roles are the French, Finnish, Estonian, Italian, Romanian and Spanish nominees.
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00:00After weeks of consultations behind closed doors, the Commission's president announced
00:05on Tuesday the policy portfolios of her 26-strong team of commissioners.
00:14There will be six executive vice presidents who will deal with big umbrella portfolios.
00:19In picking these specific ones, Ursula von der Leyen ensured that her new team will have
00:24geographical as well as political representation.
00:27Two from Socialists, Spain and Romania, one from EPP, Finland, one from ECR, Italy, and
00:33two from Liberals, France and Estonia.
00:37Six executive vice presidents, four women, two men.
00:41If you look at the geographical balance, three are from member states that joined before
00:48the fall of the Iron Curtain.
00:51We are from member states that joined after Europe was reunited.
00:57From the Baltics, the Nordics, and Eastern Europe.
01:02We have ministers and prime ministers, very different backgrounds, with one common goal
01:09and that is to make Europe stronger.
01:13One of the names that are more controversial is Rafael Lefito from Meloni's hard right
01:17party who has been nominated to be executive vice president for Cohesion and Reforms.
01:24The 22 commissioners from the other member states complete the team.
01:28There are some new portfolios such as Energy and Housing, Mediterranean and Defense.
01:35Last time the topic of global warming was absolutely top and this was the reason why
01:43I started the European Green Deal.
01:45The dominance of this topic is still there, but this time, for example, the topic of security
01:52triggered by the Russian war in Ukraine, but also the topic of competitiveness has a much
01:59broader, much more impact on the composition and the design of the political guidelines
02:05and then of course the organization of the college.
02:09It was also a surprise that the hardliner Austrian commissioner, Magnus Brunner, will
02:13be the commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration.
02:17The Hungarian commissioner, Oliver Varhely, got the weak portfolio for Health and Animal
02:21Welfare.
02:22Ursula von der Leyen's first goal was to have gender balance in her new team, but the best
02:29she could do was the 40-60 ratio.
02:33She gave, however, four of the executive vice president positions to women.
02:37One of them is Romania, which retracted its original candidate after von der Leyen lobbied
02:42for that.
02:43After the first relief, now comes the hard part of the commissioners.
02:49The new commission is expected to be in place at least the 1st of December.