Tuesday, June 05, 2018

SEFČOVIČ MAKES HIMSELF AVAILABLE: Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič from Slovakia put his hand up to be the Social Democratic Spitzenkandidat for the European election next year. At a meeting in Bratislava bringing together Social Democrats from the Visegrad 4 countries — Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland — plus Bulgaria, the Czechs tabled a proposal floating the nomination of Šefčovič, an EU official said. He was quick to accept.

“I am ready to build on this proposal from our Czech partners and positive signals from the other partners in the region,” Šefčovič told POLITICO’s Kalina Oroschakoff; her story here. Other possible Socialist candidates include (dropping a few household names here) the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans and former Parliament President Martin Schulz.

But Šefčovič is among the first to publicly voice interest in being the Socialist Spitzenkandidat (and, if things pan out, Commission president). He joins French Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, though he showed slightly less determination when we last asked him about it in March. “I don’t exclude that,” he said at the time, in answer to whether he’d run for the Commission’s top job. “I’m certainly one of those, but not the only one, who have the supposed capacities to do it.” We took it as a “yes.”

TOUCHÉ

That was fast: From a motion introduced by party youth to a declaration of war within the EPP. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz vowed not to talk to Dutch sister party CDA anymore and called on its leaders to apologize after the CDA called for Fidesz to be ejected from the European Peoples’ Party if they cross further “red lines.”

Fidesz didn’t like that. “It is intolerable, that a member party attacks the other without prior consultation,” its Vice President Katalin Novák wrote in a letter (Hungarian version here) to CDA leader Sybrand Buma. Novák accuses the CDA of “lies” (seven in number). “So many factual incorrect statements, the way they are formulated and the fact that we were informed through media about this unacceptable action, give us good reason to assume that we are facing deliberate lies.”

Response: The CDA immediately responded to Fidesz, highlighting the wonder of inter-party democracy. “At each CDA party congress, members have the opportunity to submit resolutions … In our party tradition it is a highly regarded right for every party member to seek a majority for their views.” More explanations of how things work in the Netherlands follow in the letter by the CDA’s Ruth Peetoom. In short: They won’t apologize for party democracy.

WHO ELSE ORBÁN IS CALLING: Matteo Salvini, who, as Jacopo Barigazzi writes in to tell us, is not the Italian prime minister. “Usually a PM doesn’t call an interior minister,” Jacopo points out. “Salvini says that he rang him and that they will change the EU together.”

TODAY’S APPOINTMENTS

GOING NOWHERE: The migration file. It’s June, it’s Luxembourg time and it’s Groundhog Day for a compromise on the EU’s asylum rules. The issue has consumed five Council presidencies so far, but it shows no sign of being resolved, despite pressure from minsters’ bosses, who agreed in their “leaders’ agenda” that the issue should be finalized by the end of June. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she’d prefer taking “a few weeks more” rather than rushing to a qualified majority vote as early as July.

Who’s not coming today: German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. (He’s busy at home building a firewall around the the federal asylum agency, to stop a scandal over clientelism turning into a fully fledged political disaster. Plus he’s not a big Brussels-goer anyway.) And Matteo Salvini. (He’s needed back home in parliament for votes.) So, without those two big players, guess what will happen today? Exactly.

And what’ll happen by the end of the month? Again, nothing. Jacopo Barigazzi tells you why.

Side note: The holder of the next presidency, Austria’s government, has a high profile on migration. But Vienna has made it clear to peers and the wider public that it’s more into the issue’s external dimension, beginning with the man who claims to have closed the Balkan Route in 2015, Chancellor (then foreign minister) Sebastian Kurz. Case in point: An informal summit in Salzburg in September will focus on security — “the fight against illegal immigration by securing external borders” — as the presidency program puts it, with no word about what to do about migrants once they’ve made it into the EU.

GOING TO VIENNA: Vladimir Putin will be in town to see old friends today and to commemorate 50 years of Russian gas exports to Austria. In carefully crafted diplomatic choreography, the Russian president will meet individually with President Alexander Van der Bellen and Chancellor Kurz, who will later be joined by his deputy, Heinz-Christian Strache from the far-right FPÖ party.

Better for Kurz not to leave the two alone, as Strache has called for ending the EU’s sanctions against Moscow. He didn’t even bother differentiating between the sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and those in place in retaliation for behavior in eastern Ukraine.

Kurz has stood firm on sanctions. But Othmar Karas, an MEP from the chancellor’s ÖVP, warned on Monday: “We can’t allow ourselves to become Russia’s plaything in the EU.” Our own Matthew Karnitschnig writes about why Putin will get a warm welcome in Austria.

With Italy’s League, there’s yet another party in power in the EU that that’s calling for the Union to just accept that Russia invaded Ukraine. And then there’s this: “Trump is forcing the Europeans closer to the Russians,” Stefan Meister from the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin told Bloomberg. “This is playing right into Putin’s hands.”

COMING TO BRUSSELS: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. London Playbook’s Jack Blanchard will interview her about the lessons Britain can take from Norway’s EU relationship. Watch live here from 4 p.m. Brussels time.

ALSO IN BRUSSELS TODAY: Jean-Claude Juncker, World Bank chief Kristalina Georgieva and Santander Executive Chairman Ana Botín will be delivering keynote speeches at the Brussels Economic Forum from 9:15 a.m. local time. Other key speakers include Pierre Moscovici, who I’ll be interviewing from 3:45 p.m. about Merkel’s proposals and what, if anything, they change. Watch live here; program here.

‘SHE IS EQUAL’: Global Citizen holds a European Development Days reception with the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Procter & Gamble this evening to launch#SheIsEqual, a campaign calling on people around the world to take a stand for women’s health, equality and empowerment.

HAPPENING ELSEWHERE

HOW TO RESPOND TO IRAN’S CALL FOR ISRAEL TO BE ‘ERADICATED?’ With this sick burn of course.

THE PLAN B DEPUTY: The new Italian treasury minister, Giovanni Tria, is a pro-euro (or at least not anti-euro) economist (recent critical notions notwithstanding — how else does one secure a job in a euro-critical government?). But his deputy could soon be one of the key figures in the anti-euro field, according to Corriere della Sera: Economist Alberto Bagnai, along with EU Minister Paolo Savona, is the a key mind in the basta camp. Party officials close to Salvini told our own Jacopo Barigazzi that it was a Bagnai’s writing that convinced Salvini the euro is an ill-fated currency worth dropping. Bagnai’s popular blog here.

Bagnai, questioning the euro from the left flank, argues that since Rome cannot cannot devalue its currency, salaries are suffering as a result of Italy’s issues in rising productivity. The fact that salaries would buy less after a return to the lira — well who cares about that, after you end “Germany’s imperialistic project?” Savona, by the way, as Bagnai recently said, “is more moderate than me.”

SO MUCH FOR THE BROMANCE: A phone call between Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron about trade and migration reportedly went south after the French president criticized Trump’s policies.

FAIR PLAY: The newest edition of POLITICO’s Fair Play newsletter broached one of the toughest policy headaches in Brussels: how to cope with alleged abuses in the food supply chain. Who isn’t playing fair? Supermarket alliances? Processors? Farm cartels? Competition reporter Thibault Larger explains why the debate is so heated.

Speaking of competition matters: European and American tech, media and publishing companies are complaining that Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages tool, meant to boost traffic to their mobile websites, is cementing the search giant’s dominance on the mobile web. More from Mark Scott.

EUROPE TO UK: EAT YOUR CAKE AND GO — Ulrike Guérot of the European Democracy Lab wants the U.K. to “stop acting like a spoiled child and accept that you can’t have Brexit both ways.”

OVER AND OUT

NEW JOB: Spain’s Emma Navarro has been appointed a vice president at the European Investment Bank and will become the only woman on its management committee, which the European Parliament has criticized for a “lack of diversity.” Navarro was general-secretary of the treasury and financial policy in Spain.