Ten new faces in the European Commission

Danuta Hübner (Poland)

Date: 29/04/04

"A Europhile in a country of sceptics," was how French daily Le Monde once described Danuta Hübner.

The reality is more nuanced.

While it is true that Hübner has not been as hardline as outgoing premier Leszek Miller in opposing the EU constitution drafted by the future of Europe Convention, she has offered one of the most plausible explanations for why her government has been so tenacious on that issue.

Before last year's referendum on EU entry, the government told voters that Poland would join a Union where the voting arrangements set down in the Nice Treaty would apply. It would be difficult to explain why a new system, which would effectively give Poland less clout, was now being introduced, she has argued.

As Europe minister, Berkeley-educated Hübner was very much the public face of the "vote Yes" campaign in the referendum. Her untiring efforts at that time won her much praise from EU-enthusiasts at home and abroad, but she has faced a barrage of complaints from the other side that she is more willing to court the Brussels institutions than defend the national interest.

With her impressive CV including a stint as under-secretary general of the UN, she was eager to work in the external trade field in the Commission.

Her wish has been granted - between now and October she will be "shadowing" Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.

Ján Figel (Slovakia)

Due to the EU's unease with the autocratic style of 1990s premier Vladimir Meciar, Slovakia was not given the green light to begin EU entry talks until 2000.

That was two years after Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus. Despite its delayed start and a few hiccups along the way (including a bruising scandal over the misuse of pre-accession aid), Bratislava made swift progress in its entry preparations - thanks in no small measure to the diligence of its then chief negotiator Jan Figel.

Figel subsequently represented his country on the future of Europe Convention. Yet his "promotion" to commissioner was not an entirely smooth process. Originally, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda preferred Coca-Cola manager Ivan Stefanec for the post - a move strongly denounced by Slovak anti-globalization campaigners. Deputy premier Pál Csáky also contended that Figel would be unsuitable as his Christian Democrat party has eurosceptic tendencies.

His defenders, though, point out that few Slovaks have a better grasp of the complexities of EU affairs than this unassuming 44-year-old, whose CV also boasts a stand as chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the national parliament.

One of the few amongst the new commissioners never to have served at cabinet level in his national government, Figel will be working with outgoing Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen and his successor as of July.

Sandra Kalniete (Latvia)

If luck is on her side, Sandra Kalniete could have two reasons to celebrate in May. First, the central aim of her work as foreign minister - bringing Latvia into the EU - will be realized. Second, Elle magazine will be announcing its book of the year award, for which her autobiography, With Dancing Shoes in Siberian Snow, has been nominated.

The tile comes from the experience of her mother Ligita, who (then aged 14) was trying on her dancing shoes for a classroom ball one evening in 1941 when secret police rounded up her family and placed them on cattle trucks based for Siberia. It was there, in the Gulag, where Sandra was born in 1952.

Even though her time in remotest Russia lasted just four-and-a-half years, Kalniete confesses that it influences her entire outlook. A staunch supporter of US military action in the Gulf, she has drawn parallels between Latvia under the yoke of Soviet imperialism and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Yet she also has ties with "old" Europe; her tenure as Riga's envoy to Paris in 1997-2002 turned her into a Francophile. Believed to be keen to continue working in the external relations field, she has, however, been appointed as shadow to Franz Fischler, the agriculture and fisheries chief.

Her lack of experience in these policy areas meant this choice met with a quizzical response among Brussels' chattering classes.

Pavel Telicka (Czech Republic)

A recent opinion poll by the STEM agency found that Pavel Telicka is the most popular politician in the Czech Republic.

The finding is rich in irony, given his promotion from Prague's EU ambassador to European commissioner has been criticized by Czech President Vaclav Klaus. Why? Because Telicka is a career diplomat, not a politician.

Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla had initially chosen former environment minister Milos Kuzvart for the position. Yet he promptly stepped down after being branded incompetent by deputy premier Cyril Svoboda.

Telicka's nomination as replacement was attacked by opposition parties - and didn't exactly receive a ringing endorsement from some in the ruling coalition either.

Apart from his lack of political experience, the other controversial aspect of his career is that Telicka, born in the US to diplomat parents, had joined the then Czechoslovak Communist Party in the late 1980s when he was a foreign ministry official.

Newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes has also linked him to a firm embroiled in a financial mismanagement scandal in the early 1990s.

He will be working with David Byrne, the commissioner for food safety and public health.

Siim Kallas (Estonia)

Don't mention the words "ten million dollars" to Siim Kallas. That's the amount that disappeared during his previous stint as governor of the Bank of Estonia.

And although Kallas has been cleared of any wrongdoing by his country's legal system, he still becomes visibly ill-at-ease when journalists raise the topic. No doubt, he rues a controversy which has cast a pall over his reputation as "father" of the national currency - in the 1990s, he ushered in the Estonian kroon as a replacement for the Russian rouble.

The other contentious point on his résumé is that Kallas was a member of the Soviet Communist Party in 1972-90. Yet Kallas insists he was never an agent of repression but rather someone who has always believed in the free market.

As prime minister, his public utterances sought to balance his passion for capitalism with concern for the marginalized.

The widening gap between the haves and have-nots, he prophesized, "could one day sweep away everything that we have created".

Kallas will be shadowing the new Spanish Commissioner Joaquin Almunia (economic and monetary affairs), who is replacing Pedro Solbes.

Marcos Kyprianou (Cyprus)

A 44-year-old lawyer, Kyprianou bears the unusual distinction of being educated at both Cambridges - the universities in England and at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition, he will be a relatively youthful emissary for a country, where political leaders are typically septuagenarian.

Kyprianou has been active in Cypriot politics since he was elected a municipal councillor in Nicosia in 1986.

Since then he has been a parliamentary leader for the Democratic Party and a chairman of parliamentary committees on financial and budgetary affairs and areas close to the "green line" dividing the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus, before being appointed finance minister last year.

Part of his job involved pricing the plan, sponsored by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on reunifying Cyprus. The finance ministry estimated its cost to be €28 billion - interestingly basing its calculation on the reunification of a far larger country - Germany.

He was also responsible for a partial lifting of banking secrecy in Cyprus, as part of a campaign against tax evasion. A specialist in tax law, he will be working with Budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer.

Dalia Grybauskaite (Lithuania)

Either Romano Prodi is fearless or else nobody told him that Dalia Grybauskaite has a black belt in karate.

For the European Commission president decided to ignore her requests - aired publicly in February - that she be assigned to an economics portfolio. Instead, he has charged her with chaperoning Viviane Reding in the culture department, which is considered way down the EU executive's pecking order.

Her 2001-04 stint holding the country's purse strings won her much admiration from fans of austerity budgets. One newspaper profile described her as "the tough-as-nails finance minister who transformed the country's economy from Baltic laggard to Baltic tiger".

Previously a senior diplomat in both Washington and Brussels, she is not, however, diplomatic. She doesn't flinch from taking on the powerful farming lobby by querying whether so much subsidies should be paid out under the Common Agricultural Policy, for example. Nor has she shied away from making plain her displeasure at the job Prodi has handed her.

Speaking English, French, Russian and Polish, Grybauskaite has degrees in economics from universities in St Petersburg and Moscow under her (black) belt. In the early 1990s - as economics director in the foreign ministry - she was instrumental in securing a free trade deal between Lithuania and the EU.

Janez Potocnik (Slovenia)

Back in 1998, this economist and former long-jump champion was one of the authors of Slovenia's accession strategy, which proposed far-reaching changes, including pension and tax reform and the privatization of state-owned banks.

Since then, he has been the country's ever-so-meticulous chief negotiator with the EU, as well as Europe minister. He was assigned the latter task by then premier Janez Drnovsek in 2002 and retained it when Drnovsek handed over the baton to Anton Rop. Not linked to any party, he has been able to stay above the political fray.

"Of course, Slovenia will be just a small piece in the great European mosaic," he once remarked. "But for us it means security, stability and prosperity. And we shall finally be able to show our Balkan neighbours that there is light at the end of the tunnel."

Not renowned for being outspoken, he nonetheless has warned that the high level of finances eaten by the Common Agricultural Policy will make the realization of EU goals, such as building the world's top economy, difficult to achieve.

Potocnik, born in 1958, has a doctorate in economics from the University of Ljubljana. He will shadow enlargement chief Günter Verheugen.

Joe Borg (Malta)

A cartoon on satirical website maltafly.com depicts Foreign Minister Borg boarding The Titanic with Eddie Fenech Adami, who stepped down as prime minister recently to become president.

Last year, however, Borg argued cogently that it was the opposition Labour Party's "No to EU" campaign that would leave the island sunk because it would deprive it of aid.

A former lecturer in company law in England and Wales, Borg was an official in Valletta's foreign ministry in 1989-95. There he was responsible for setting up a policy department dedicated to EU affairs and wrote a strategy paper for how Malta could accede to the EU.

It was published in 1990 - 14 years ahead of its time.

In 1992-95, he sat on the board of directors at the Maltese Central Bank. Elected to the national parliament in Valletta in 1995, he was appointed foreign minister four years later and re-appointed after the Nationalist Party won a hastily called general election in 2003.

He has taken part in meetings with notorious Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, who despite being shunned by several European countries until last December's breakthrough on weapons of mass destruction, has long enjoyed friendly relations with Malta.

Borg will be assisting Development Commissioner Poul Nielson.

Péter Bálazs (Hungary)

"WE like each other but there has been a bit less love than before," Bálazs said in 2002, at a time when would-be member states were peeved that the EU-15 did not want to be over-generous in allocating agricultural or regional policy aid.

The remark was one of several colourful comments made by the 62-year-old diplomat, who despite not being an elected politician openly declares that his views are left-of-centre.

Lately, for example, he has suggested that Hungary might have to place restrictions on people from western Europe travelling to work in the country - in retaliation to measures introduced by current EU member states against workers from the acceding countries. (He has subsequently retracted the threat.)

Budapest's representative on the future of Europe Convention, Bálazs contributed to preparations for the collapse of communism in the 1980s by working as an economist in Hungary's embassy in Bonn. In 1997-2000, he was the country's envoy to Germany and was previously its ambassador to Denmark. After heading the European integration division in the Hungarian foreign ministry in 2002-03, he was named EU ambassador last year.

Asked to work with new French Commissioner Jacques Barrot (regional policy), he has already stirred controversy by proposing that the Commission could save money by ensuring the highest possible use of English and French, rather than having to translate each document into all official EU languages.

Article is part of a European Voice Special Report on EU Enlargement and provides a brief profile of each of the ten new European Commissioners from the Member States that joined the EU on 1 May 2004.