Brat summer ends in sausage fest

What’s driving the day in Brussels.
By SARAH WHEATON
with ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH
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HOWDY. Welcome to Tuesday’s Brussels Playbook, where we don’t care that you’re dropping your kids off at school, badging into the Parliament for the first time since June or attending five rentrée cocktails this week. The only voice that matters has spoken. Charli XCX tweeted on Monday evening: “goodbye forever brat summer.”
CAPITALS IN GENDER TROUBLE WITH VDL: Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is fighting to prevent her brat summer from devolving into a male-dominated sausage fest of a College. That means turning the screws to get countries (especially the smaller ones) to send her more women nominees. 
Gap slowly closing: Currently, just nine of the nominees to join von der Leyen’s 26-member team are women — and that’s an improvement over where we started the week. On Monday, Romania swapped out its plans to nominate a male Socialist MEP, Victor Negrescu, for a female one: Roxana Mînzatu. And on Monday evening, Belgium’s caretaker Prime Minister Alexander De Croo formally nominated Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, in a letter to von der Leyen viewed by POLITICO’s Camille Gijs.
Pressure’s on: Three diplomats who spoke to POLITICO said von der Leyen was pressuring at least five smaller EU countries, including Slovenia and Malta, to consider replacing the male candidates they’ve put forward with women. Read the full article from Nick Vinocur and Barbara Moens on von der Leyen’s battle of the sexes.
BELGIAN PICK DUBBED “NEW CHARLES MICHEL”: The choice of Belgian Foreign Minister Lahbib is a blow to Didier Reynders, the country’s current commissioner and initial favorite for the job. She’s a dicey choice, both within the liberal MR party and the broader coalition trying to form a new government, because Belgian politicians and diplomats see her as having failed in the top diplomat role. The controversy was among the reasons for the delayed nomination (but definitely not the only one), four Belgian officials told POLITICO. More on that here. 
Meeting a need: On paper, Lahbib ticks a lot of boxes, Barbara Moens writes in to report. She’s a much-needed female to help correct von der Leyen’s lopsided Commission; she is a foreign minister in a country known for its complicated politics; and she just wrapped up six months of European experience during the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU.
With (anonymous) friends like these … However, Belgian diplomats and officials speaking to Barbara cast Lahbib as another example of “failing up,” just like Charles Michel bouncing up to the European Council presidency in 2019, soon after his party (also MR) suffered severe electoral losses while he was prime minister. One questioned how Lahbib, a former TV news anchor, would perform during her Parliament hearing without the aid of a script. 
So what about Charles Michel? For Michel, the move seems like a win-win, two other officials said. There is no second term for his long-standing rival Reynders; his nemesis von der Leyen gets a commissioner of questionable competence; and he can position himself as a natural successor for Lahbib as Belgium’s foreign minister, which has been a long-circulating rumor in Belgium. Others, however, warned that Michel’s move to foreign affairs is far from a done deal within his party.
Playbook’s silver lining: This all made us recall a quote attributed to Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion: “When Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we’ll be a state just like any other.” Let’s say we apply it to feminism: What better represents gender equality than women getting jobs through political convenience and failing up? Congratulations on your progress, EU!
WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN: Negrescu, who at 39 repeatedly referenced his (relative) youth and potential ability to “communicate more with young people” as a qualification for the EU post, reiterated Monday that he hopes, “nevertheless we will still have young commissioners.” More on that here from Paul Dallison and Max Griera. 
Gen Xers dominate: POLITICO’s own Karl Mathiesen investigated and found that the vast majority of Commission nominees are Gen Xers. Just five are baby boomers (one is von der Leyen herself, and another is Bulgarian nominee Julian Popov, who is likely to be passed over for that country’s Gen X female candidate, Ekaterina Zaharieva). 
Minimal millennials: The two remaining millennials are Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen, 42, and Malta’s Glenn Micallef, 35, though the latter’s nomination is also on life support. 
“Slacker Generation” this ain’t: The remaining nominees, including those from Belgium and Romania, are from Gen X. We hope the fact Mînzatu is less than six years older than Negrescu is a source of comfort to him amid his disappointment. 
CHIEF ECONOMIST OR BUST: Several economists, EU passports in hand, will try to win over Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager in last-round interviews for a key role that’s proven surprisingly hard to fill: that of chief competition economist.
The job has been empty for a year since Pierre Régibeau retired. Competition chief Vestager’s pick, star American economist Fiona Scott Morton, was forced to step aside before she even started, due to her lack of EU citizenship.
Grumbling from MEPs: Lawmakers are not happy about Vestager’s move to try to fill the post just weeks before she finishes up as competition commissioner. “This is an unfortunate way of securing your political legacy,” said René Repasi, a German socialist, noting that Vestager’s successor “might think politically quite differently on competition and markets.” 
Might as well wait longer: Even French liberal lawmaker Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, a party colleague of Vestager’s, raised doubts about the process. “It’s been a year now that we don’t have a chief economist: what is the rush now to make that decision before the end of the term?” she said.
Why it’s so sensitive: The chief competition economist was once a solid technocrat. No longer. The post comes with the potential to influence how competition policy could help or hamper efforts to boost EU industrial capacity and close yawning gaps with the U.S. and China. Giovanna Faggionato and Max Griera have more here for Competition Pros.
FAR LEFT POWER SHIFT: The newly registered European Left Alliance for the People and the Planet (ELA) is poised to rebrand the far left of the EU’s political spectrum. La France Insoumise, Spain’s Podemos, Portugal’s Bloco de Esquerda, Poland’s Razem, Denmark’s Enhedslisten, Sweden’s Vänsterpartiet and Finland’s Vasemmistoliitto have all signed on to the ELA, according to the documentation published by the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF), spotted by Max Griera.
Catch me up: Playbook reported on Friday that several national left-wing parties decided to part ways with the current European Left (EL), which they regarded as old-fashioned and dominated by small communist parties. The new ELA now holds 18 out of the 46 lawmakers who compose the Left group in the European Parliament, while the EL has just five — mostly from Greece’s Syriza and Germany’s Die Linke.
Leadership: Swedish MEP Malin Björk and Portuguese MEP Catarina Martins are the co-chairs, France’s Sophie Rauszer is the secretary-general, Poland’s Zofia Malisz is treasurer, and Spanish MEP Isabel Serra Sánchez administrator. The ELA’s offices will be in Brussels, on Avenue Louise, close to the Bois de la Cambre.
What will the Germans do? Die Linke hasn’t ruled out joining the new party. “All questions related to the foundation of a new left-wing party will be decided by Die Linke in due course,” the office of Martin Schirdewan, its leader in the European Parliament, said in a statement. 
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“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — Douglas Adams
MISSED DEADLINE: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán missed the first deadline to pay a €200 million fine ordered by the EU’s top court. The Commission is now giving Budapest until Sept. 17. If the money isn’t wired by then, the executive will launch an “offsetting procedure” and start deducting the sum from EU payouts to Hungary. Euronews has more. 
FUTURE MISSED DEADLINE: The Commission is supposed to deliver its seven-year, €1.2 trillion budget by July 2025. But that could slide well beyond, until after Germany’s federal election in September of next year, Gregorio Sorgi reports. With Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government looking likely to fall, delaying the MFF until after the vote would allow the Commission to feel out the new leadership’s sentiments on sensitive questions like using common debt ― which Germany has long opposed ― to fund European defense.
Past is prologue: Here are 5 takeaways from Germany’s eastern elections.
WRITING HARRIS INTO THE READOUT: The White House is eager to show that Vice President Kamala Harris was in the room when President Joe Biden was dealing with major foreign policy events such as the Israel-Hamas conflict and the prisoner swap that freed reporter Evan Gershkovich from a Russian prison. My colleague Eric Bazail-Eimil in Washington reviewed transcripts, readouts and other documents which show that mentions of Harris in the official record increased dramatically since July, when Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed his No. 2 for the Democratic presidential nomination.
What gives? Name-checking Harris — or any vice president, for that matter — is unusual and suggests an attempt to buttress her credentials as she faces questions about her ability to manage international affairs and defeat an experienced opponent in former President Donald Trump. Republicans seized on Harris’ acknowledgment that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden settled on his ultimately disastrous plan to pull out of Afghanistan in 2021.
NETANYAHU DEFIANT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against a new wave of pressure to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza after hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested and went on strike and U.S. President Joe Biden said he needed to do more to end the conflict, the Associated Press reported. “No one will preach to me on this issue,” Netanyahu said, rejecting calls to relinquish control over a strategic corridor along the Gaza-Egyptian border.
ALBANIA RELEASES IMPRISONED MEP: Fredi Beleri, a Greek European People’s Party MEP who was elected while sitting in an Albanian jail, was released on Monday, Balkan Insight reports. Beleri was sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly vote-buying in a local election, in a case that inflamed tensions between Athens and Tirana.
MAKES YOU THINK: Eurofi, an opaque self-styled “think tank” that offers businesses access to EU politicians and regulators, has raked in almost €6 million in fees from the finance industry this year, fueling concerns about lack of transparency and cash-for-influence over financial policymaking, POLITICO’s Hannah Brenton reports.
— Informal meeting of the General Affairs Council in Budapest, Hungary. Arrivals and doorsteps at 7:50 a.m. roundtable at 9 a.m. press conference at 3:15 p.m. … Watch.
— Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski is in Cyprus participating in the MED9 agriculture summit.  
— Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton receives U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the U.S. Senate’s finance committee.
— Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe is in London, U.K., where he’ll hold a bilateral meeting with U.K.’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves and deliver a keynote speech to the City of London Corporation at the Guildhall on “financing our future.”
WEATHER: High of 22C, chance of rain.
BELGIUM GOVERNMENT UPDATE: Flemish separatist Bart De Wever is getting another go at forming a Belgian government, Pieter Haeck reports.
NEWS FROM POLITICO TOWER: Competition journalist Francesca Micheletti and data protection reporter Sam Clark have joined the POLITICO Europe team in Brussels.
JOB MOVE: Remy Esquiliche, the current spokesperson for Belgium’s Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, is returning to work for his former boss Sophie Wilmès as a parliamentary assistant.
NEW JOB: Maria Demertzis, the former deputy director of Bruegel, is now the chief economist for Europe of The Conference Board.
GRINDR WARNS BRUSSELS USERS: The dating app has introduced an alert on homophobic violence after police confirmed they’re investigating whether a fake date was at the root of a deadly shooting during an Ixelles home invasion (which we mentioned in Friday’s Playbook).
“Like any social networking and dating platform, there may be instances where bad actors attempt to misuse its features, potentially putting users at risk,” a Grindr spokesperson told Playbook reporter Šejla Ahmatović. “To support our community, we have been displaying in-app safety messages with tips for users in Brussels.” The spokesperson added that the company strongly encourages users to report suspicious behavior and to use its video calling feature before meeting in person. 
MEA CULPA: In Monday’s edition of Playbook, we gave the wrong job title to Estonia’s and Denmark’s incoming ambassadors to the EU. Lauri Kuusing and Lene Mandel Vensild are PSC ambassadors for Estonia and Denmark, respectively.
BIRTHDAYS: MEP Inese Vaidere; former MEPs Peter van Dalen, Salvatore Cicu, Péter Niedermüller, Marc Joulaud and Arndt Kohn; POLITICO’s Barbara Moens; former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi; APRE’s Mattia Ceracchi; L’Oréal’s Annalisa Barbagallo.
THANKS TO: Barbara Moens, Max Griera, Karl Mathiesen, Camille Gijs and Pieter Haeck; Playbook editor Alex Spence, Playbook reporter Šejla Ahmatović and producer Catherine Bouris.
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