EU leaders have nominated current European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen for a second five-year term.
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was chosen to be the EU’s next foreign affairs chief and former Portuguese prime minister António Costa was chosen as the next chairman of EU summits.
All three candidates are from centrist, pro-EU factions, points out the BBC. Ursula von der Leyen is from Germany’s center-right, António Costa is a socialist and Kaja Kallas a liberal.
Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, says that the successes of hard-right parties have been ignored by the European Commission, which is why Meloni publicly abstained from voting for von der Leyen.
Indeed, Meloni, who heads the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc in the European Parliament, was ostentatiously not included in talks on the nominations, despite the fact that the ECR became the third largest group in the parliament following the European elections.
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