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Macron Suffers Setback After His EU Commission Pick Is Rejected

Macron Suffers Setback After His EU Commission Pick Is Rejected

(Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron was dealt an embarrassing political blow when his candidate for the European Commission was rejected over concerns about an ongoing investigation into misuse of public funds.

Two European Parliament committees in Brussels on Thursday voted down Sylvie Goulard in a setback to France’s plans to shape the agenda of the incoming commission, the EU’s executive arm. The 54-year-old no. 2 at the French central bank is a close ally of Macron and had been tapped to lead the bloc’s industrial policy and digital market for the next five years.

Macron Suffers Setback After His EU Commission Pick Is Rejected

Macron reacted with frustration to the veto of Goulard by the EU Parliament’s internal-market and industry committees, pointing the finger partly at commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen. Macron said von der Leyen had been instrumental in his decision to put forward Goulard from among three possible French candidates for European commissioner.

“I’d like to understand what happened,” he told reporters in the southern French city of Lyon. Still, Macron said what matters most is the portfolio being reserved for France’s next appointee to the commission.

He plans to phone von der Leyen to discuss the next steps, which follow separate EU Parliament decisions forcing the Hungarian and Romanian governments to name new candidates for the incoming commission.

Von der Leyen sought to brush off the setbacks as part of the democratic process in which the EU Parliament vets commissioners and seeks to hold the commission as a whole to account.

“We must not lose sight of what is at stake,” she said in an emailed statement. “The next five years will be decisive for Europe in a difficult global environment.”

It’s not uncommon for designated European commissioners to get knocked back, but this rejection is a bad look for Macron and von der Leyen at a delicate moment, with Brexit still a gnawing concern, transatlantic trade tensions growing and Turkey in the midst of a controversial incursion into Syria.

Goulard had faced a grilling during her confirmation hearing last week when European lawmakers zeroed in on her legal problems and a highly-paid stint advising a U.S. think tank. During hours of questioning, the EU Parliament members asked how she could be eligible to become a European commissioner when she had been forced to step down as a minister in the French government.

Goulard quit as Macron’s defense chief in 2017 after only a few weeks as a result of an investigation into whether she misused public funds during her time as a European lawmaker.

Macron’s office says Goulard was cleared at the EU level. But French authorities are still conducting a separate probe into her party while the EU anti-fraud office is looking into Goulard herself. She denies any wrongdoing.

The loss serves as a lesson for the French president of the risks of his sometimes high-handed style. He riled European lawmakers before the summer when he sidelined official EU Parliament nominees for the post of commission chief. Now the lawmakers have got their own back.

The concerns over Goulard’s suitability also focused on her work advising Berggruen Institute, which reportedly paid her around 10,000 euros ($11,000) a month for several years from 2013 to 2016, a period that overlapped with her time as an EU Parliament member.

The original Romanian and Hungarian nominees for commissioner got booted over alleged irregularities in their financial statements.

The EU Parliament has a track record of forcing incoming commission presidents to make changes to their teams. Both current commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and his predecessor, Jose Barroso, rejigged commissioner assignments before taking office as a result of EU Parliament objections.

In the case of Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister who served as commission president from 2004 until 2014, he and his first team started work three weeks late after re-assignments to the justice, tax and energy portfolios.

In its most dramatic move against the commission, the EU Parliament forced the resignation in 1999 of the entire commission leadership team under then President Jacques Santer as a result of a scandal affecting France’s appointee.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nikos Chrysoloras in Brussels at nchrysoloras@bloomberg.net;Geraldine Amiel in Paris at gamiel@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey

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