Europe’s Commish chooses her team

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen on Tuesday named the team that will work with her as she heads into her second term as the EU’s most powerful official.

What’s the Commission? It’s 27 officials, one from each member state, who propose and oversee EU laws. Think immigration, antitrust, trade, and tech regulation. A key responsibility is drafting the EU budget.

Foreign and defense portfolios went to arch-Russia hawks from the Baltics, while Spain, Italy, and France – which generally favor more state economic intervention – got industrial policy and competition-related files. The choice of a hard-right politician from Italy raised hackles on the left, but it’s part of Von der Leyen’s strategy of engaging the right, in particular Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, to head off a wider populist backlash.

She also nearly reached her goal of gender parity, noting that some member states failed to follow the protocol of nominating one female and one male candidate for each post.

“She’s lining up all her ducks,” says Eurasia Group expert Emre Peker. The big task? Implementing the new $800 billion annual do-or-die economic reform proposals of former ECB president Mario Draghi. “That money isn’t going to materialize out of thin air,” says Peker. It will have to come either from debt issuance, unpopular with the union’s fiscal hawks, or by taking money from popular economic support programs. Either option will be a bruising political fight.