BRUSSELS: EU leaders meeting in Brussels Monday appeared increasingly to line up behind Ursula von der Leyen for a new term heading the powerful European Commission — but a push from her conservative camp for a bigger slice of the bloc’s top jobs threatened to drag out the horse-trading.
Far-right gains in EU-wide elections in early June, which triggered snap polls and political upheaval in France, had seemed to focus minds around the positions helming the bloc — negotiated with an eye to geographic and political balance.
Leaders were aiming to forge the contours of a deal on who takes the EU’s top three jobs — heading the commission, chairing summits, and stewarding the bloc’s diplomacy — before making a formal choice at a summit on June 27-28.
“I am sure we can find an agreement in the shortest possible time,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said as he arrived for the evening talks.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte echoed that, saying there seemed to be an “increasing amount of consensus” around the post of commission chief in particular.
But hopes of a quick agreement floundered after diplomats said leaders from von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party (EPP) made a surprise bid to split another of the top jobs.
The other roles to be decided are: president of the European Council, which represents member states and is currently filled by Charles Michel; and the “high representative” — the EU’s foreign policy chief — currently Josep Borrell.
The EPP was the biggest winner in the June 6-9 EU Parliament elections, cementing the German conservative’s bid for five more years leading the executive body of the world’s second-largest economy.
The second-biggest group in parliament, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), had their sights set on the Council position, with Antonio Costa, Portugal’s 62-year-old former prime minister, seen as the frontrunner.
But Costa has a cloud hanging over him after he became embroiled in a corruption probe that forced his resignation, even if the case has since appeared to come apart.
Diplomats said EPP leaders suggested the council chief role should be split, with the socialists getting it for 2.5 years and the conservatives getting it for the rest of the five years.
“They are playing hardball,” said a European diplomat.
The high representative position, meanwhile, could go to Kaja Kallas, 46, current premier of Estonia and an outspoken Kremlin critic — in a strong signal to the EU’s east.
The bloc’s biggest eastern power Poland announced ahead of the talks that it was backing Kallas for the role.
A fourth job in play is that of European Parliament president, which is decided by the legislature, not the leaders.
It is likely to return to the incumbent, the EPP’s Roberta Metsola, 45, for another two-and-a-half-year term — but could form part of a swap deal with the socialists to oil the wheels.
To secure the nod from EU leaders, von der Leyen, 65, needs support from a “qualified majority” of 15 out of 27 countries, covering at least 65 percent of the bloc’s population.
A dozen leaders come from her EPP political grouping, but she also needs to win over Macron, from the centrist Renew Europe group, and Scholz of the S&D.
Both leaders of the French-German axis at the heart of the European Union have emerged weakened after being beaten by far-right parties in the EU Parliament elections.
Most spectacularly, in France the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen trounced the party of the president, who now faces the prospect of the RN’s leader — the 28-year-old TikTok-friendly Jordan Bardella — potentially becoming his prime minister.
Conversely, the elections strengthened the hand of Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who diplomats suggest may want to let the dust settle in the new EU parliament — where her far-right party’s grouping gained seats and may yet gain more — and negotiate accordingly.
If, as expected, von der Leyen ultimately pockets enough leaders’ votes, she can set about choosing her commissioners — drawn from each of the EU member countries, with consideration for gender balance and political affiliation.
But she will have one more hurdle to pass: The new European Parliament has to approve leaders’ picks and proposed commissioners.
Most lawmakers from the EPP, which holds 190 seats in the incoming 720-seat parliament, will endorse von der Leyen, but she will need support from elsewhere to secure a majority.
That would likely come from the other mainstream political families, the S&D and Renew, or from the Greens — but von der Leyen has also been covering her bases by courting Meloni on the hard right.
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Von der Leyen tipped for nod, as EU leaders haggle over top jobs
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Von der Leyen tipped for nod, as EU leaders haggle over top jobs
- Leaders were aiming to forge the contours of a deal on who takes the EU’s top three jobs
Italian fruit detective racing to save forgotten varieties
CITTA DI CASTELLO: Isabella Dalla Ragione hunts in abandoned gardens and orchards for forgotten fruits, preserving Italy’s agricultural heritage and saving varieties which could help farmers withstand the vagaries of a changing climate.
The 68-year-old’s collection of apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches and almonds, grown using methods of old, are more resilient to the climate shifts and extremes seen increasingly frequently in the southern Mediterranean.
The Italian agronomist-turned-detective seeks descriptions of bygone local fruits in centuries-old diaries or farming documents, and sets out to find them.
Others she identifies by matching them to fruits in Renaissance paintings, where they often appear in depictions of the Madonna and Child.
Of the 150 or so varieties collected from Tuscany, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna and Marche and grown by her non-profit Archaeologia Arborea foundation, the small, round Florentine pear is among Dalla Ragione’s favorites.
“I’d found it described in documents from the 1500s, but I’d never seen it and believed it lost,” she told AFP.
“Then 15 years ago, in the mountains between Umbria and Marche, I found a tree almost in the middle of the woods,” thanks to an elderly local woman who told her about it by chance.
While old varieties are flavoursome, most disappeared from markets and tables after the Second World War as Italy’s agricultural system modernized.
- ‘Urgent’ -
Italy is a large fruit producer. Its pear production ranks first in Europe and third globally, but just five modern varieties — none of which are Italian — account for over 80 percent of its output.
“There used to be hundreds, even thousands, of varieties because each region, each valley, each place had its own,” Dalla Ragione said as she showed off wicker baskets full of fruit, stored in a little church near the orchard.
Modern markets instead demand large crops of fruits that can be harvested quickly, easily stored and last a long time.
But as global warming makes for an increasingly challenging climate, experts say a broader range of plant genetic diversity is key.
“Heirloom varieties... are able to adapt to climate change, to more severe water shortages, to extremes of cold and heat,” said Mario Marino, from the climate change division of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
“However, a much more severe disease arrives, one that improved varieties are normally more resistant to... and the local varieties perish, or perhaps don’t produce fruit,” he told AFP.
The answer lies in creating new varieties by crossing modern and old-fashioned ones, he said.
Marino, who advises Dalla Ragione’s foundation, said her work was “urgent” because “preserving one’s heritage means preserving the land, preserving biodiversity... and (allowing) us to use that DNA for new genetic resources.”
- Oral testimonies -
Researchers can access the collection, while Dalla Ragione also recreates historical gardens which can host recovered varieties as part of an EU-funded project.
“We don’t do all this research and conservation work out of nostalgia, out of romanticism,” she said as she harvested pink apples from her trees in the hilly hamlet of San Lorenzo di Lerchi in Umbria.
“We do it because when we lose variety, we lose food security, we lose diversity and the system’s ability to respond to various changes, and we also lose a lot in cultural terms.”
Dalla Ragione has sought answers to fruit mysteries in monastery orchards, the gardens of nobility and common allotments. She has pored over local texts from the 16th and 17th centuries.
She once traced a pear to a village in southern Umbria after reading about it in the diary of a musical band director.
But one of her richest sources on how best to cultivate such varieties has been oral testimonies — and as the last generation of farmers that grew the crops die, much local knowledge is lost.
That has made it difficult to know how to divide her time between researching and looking for a new variety, though she has learnt the hard way that the urgency “is always to save it.”
“In the past if I’ve delayed, thinking ‘I’ll do it next year’, I’ve found the plant has since gone.”
The 68-year-old’s collection of apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches and almonds, grown using methods of old, are more resilient to the climate shifts and extremes seen increasingly frequently in the southern Mediterranean.
The Italian agronomist-turned-detective seeks descriptions of bygone local fruits in centuries-old diaries or farming documents, and sets out to find them.
Others she identifies by matching them to fruits in Renaissance paintings, where they often appear in depictions of the Madonna and Child.
Of the 150 or so varieties collected from Tuscany, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna and Marche and grown by her non-profit Archaeologia Arborea foundation, the small, round Florentine pear is among Dalla Ragione’s favorites.
“I’d found it described in documents from the 1500s, but I’d never seen it and believed it lost,” she told AFP.
“Then 15 years ago, in the mountains between Umbria and Marche, I found a tree almost in the middle of the woods,” thanks to an elderly local woman who told her about it by chance.
While old varieties are flavoursome, most disappeared from markets and tables after the Second World War as Italy’s agricultural system modernized.
- ‘Urgent’ -
Italy is a large fruit producer. Its pear production ranks first in Europe and third globally, but just five modern varieties — none of which are Italian — account for over 80 percent of its output.
“There used to be hundreds, even thousands, of varieties because each region, each valley, each place had its own,” Dalla Ragione said as she showed off wicker baskets full of fruit, stored in a little church near the orchard.
Modern markets instead demand large crops of fruits that can be harvested quickly, easily stored and last a long time.
But as global warming makes for an increasingly challenging climate, experts say a broader range of plant genetic diversity is key.
“Heirloom varieties... are able to adapt to climate change, to more severe water shortages, to extremes of cold and heat,” said Mario Marino, from the climate change division of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
“However, a much more severe disease arrives, one that improved varieties are normally more resistant to... and the local varieties perish, or perhaps don’t produce fruit,” he told AFP.
The answer lies in creating new varieties by crossing modern and old-fashioned ones, he said.
Marino, who advises Dalla Ragione’s foundation, said her work was “urgent” because “preserving one’s heritage means preserving the land, preserving biodiversity... and (allowing) us to use that DNA for new genetic resources.”
- Oral testimonies -
Researchers can access the collection, while Dalla Ragione also recreates historical gardens which can host recovered varieties as part of an EU-funded project.
“We don’t do all this research and conservation work out of nostalgia, out of romanticism,” she said as she harvested pink apples from her trees in the hilly hamlet of San Lorenzo di Lerchi in Umbria.
“We do it because when we lose variety, we lose food security, we lose diversity and the system’s ability to respond to various changes, and we also lose a lot in cultural terms.”
Dalla Ragione has sought answers to fruit mysteries in monastery orchards, the gardens of nobility and common allotments. She has pored over local texts from the 16th and 17th centuries.
She once traced a pear to a village in southern Umbria after reading about it in the diary of a musical band director.
But one of her richest sources on how best to cultivate such varieties has been oral testimonies — and as the last generation of farmers that grew the crops die, much local knowledge is lost.
That has made it difficult to know how to divide her time between researching and looking for a new variety, though she has learnt the hard way that the urgency “is always to save it.”
“In the past if I’ve delayed, thinking ‘I’ll do it next year’, I’ve found the plant has since gone.”
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