The formation of the new EU Commission was a difficult birth. It took just over nine weeks, not nine months, for the college of 27 commissioners to see the light of day. But it was not without reason that Ursula von der Leyen spoke on Tuesday of “intensive weeks of negotiations with the member states”. Most of them had very precise ideas about which portfolio their candidates should take on. More than twenty member states would have wanted a strong economic portfolio, said von der Leyen in Strasbourg. But there are not that many. For this reason alone, the mother of the new team, to stay with the metaphor, had a few surprises in store.
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