First Lady Melania Trump was cozy and chic for a gathering at the White House for her “Be Best” campaign where she warned of the dangers of e-cigarettes and vaping.

Mrs. Trump spoke to American teenagers and high school students at the White House on Wednesday, wearing a cashmere knit dress by The Row — the American fashion brand of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, known for its minimalism and oversized knitwear.

The Row dress was paired with pale pink snakeskin pointed toe stilettos by Manolo Blahnik, Mrs. Trump’s most beloved shoe designer.

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“Thank you to the @truthinitiative teens for joining me today & sharing your experiences w/vaping. It exposed just how invasive these dangerous products have become in our schools & communities. I’m listening & will continue tackling this important issue. #BeBest,” Melania Trump wrote on Instagram.

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John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

**This article is part of Competition Pro: POLITICO’s premium coverage of competition, antitrust, cartel and state aid issues. Competition Pro includes a weekly newsletter, Fair Play, every Monday morning. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary trial.**

If you thought the European Commission was the unrivaled overlord of competition in Europe, it’s time to think again.

While EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager has stolen the limelight for her high-profile cases involving Google and Apple, it is national authorities such as Germany’s Bundeskartellamt and France’s Autorité de la Concurrence that have increasingly blazed a trail — both in terms of new ideas, and cases.

“There has been a real change,” observed Antoine Winckler, a partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb. “There was an accumulation of factors that caused national competition authorities to take off.”

Over the past 15 years, Brussels has changed the way European competition policy operates to share out the investigations. As a result, national authorities have built up muscle, and now often lead the way in tackling antitrust problems in sectors such as Big Tech and pharmaceuticals.

In part, the rise of the national authorities has also been due to the emergence of big-hitting personalities. Germany’s Andreas Mundt has surfed the surging media interest in competition battles, busting beer and sausage cartels, while his French counterpart Bruno Lasserre made headlines for sanctioning mobile telephone giants (implicating a former minister), and forcing Visa and Mastercard to slash their commission fees.

The national trust-busters took on the sort of antitrust cases Brussels seemed to disregard — and were the first to confront the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, allowing them to build up technical expertise that the Commission did not have. They vied with each other in developing new doctrines for the new frontiers of antitrust such as online advertising (in 2010), e-commerce (in 2012), or the antitrust of data.

For instance, as early as 2008, the French competition watchdog pressed Apple and Orange to break an exclusivity agreement, deemed anti-competitive, that they had signed for the distribution of the iPhone in France.

Two years later, the Autorité forced Google to change its worldwide terms in a case involving data for navigation systems. In Brussels, by contrast, the first decision against the search giant did not come until 2015, and there is still plenty of disagreement as to whether Brussels fixed the issues.

It has been a similar picture in pharmaceuticals. In 2016, the Italian Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato fined Aspen €5 million for illegally boosting the prices of drugs. In 2017, the Spanish competition watchdog opened an investigation into Aspen’s pricing practices, three months before the European Commission started its own investigation.

Brussels has largely been happy with the new division of labor since 2003, although according to two experts there have been tensions at times — such as a U.K. investigation into arrangements between hotels and online travel agents, which Brussels wanted to take over, and the Facebook case in Germany.

Technology to tame

It was the emergence of the frenzied debate around digital platforms like Facebook and Amazon that allowed national regulators to show their mettle. While the Commission became bogged down in a seemingly endless to-and-fro over how to handle a case over Google’s Search, national regulators proved more nimble.

“They had a real competitive advantage,” Lasserre said.

National watchdogs could open and close an investigation much more quickly than the Commission, and, in the case of France, force big companies to change their practices in a few months by imposing interim measures, as with Apple and Orange in 2008.

Nobody doubts the volume of cases handled at country level. A dive into available data shows that since the 2003 introduction of the new Europe-wide regime, the European Commission has been responsible for 105 antitrust decisions, while the Italian watchdog has notched up 149, the French 144, and Germany and Spain both 119.

“The most important cases came to Brussels, although in the digital sphere, the national competition authorities have also done a lot,” said Alec Burnside, a partner at law firm Dechert.

Mundt at the Bundeskartellamt said recent years have been shaped by a “renaissance of vertical restraints cases.” These were cases that focused on complaints about the way that big companies could control key parts of the digital supply chain.

The Commission was initially less concerned about these cases as  most agreements between suppliers and their retailers happen at a national level. Since then, the Commission has tried to catch up, and eventually opened cases against Sanrio, Guess, Nike, Asus, Denon & Marantz, Pioneer and Universal Studios, following the conclusions of the e-commerce sector investigation of 2015.

How it all began

The rise of the national authorities was partly inspired by necessity.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the Commission could not keep up with its backlog of cases and introduced a new law (snappily called Regulation 1/2003) to offload cases onto national competition authorities by sharing powers. This came as a “relief” for European antitrust bodies, according to several antitrust experts.

Philip Lowe, who was the EU official overseeing the implementation of the new rules, explained that Regulation 1/2003 was central to the emancipation of competition watchdogs in Europe, as it allowed them to tackle cases without asking the Commission: “So they took off!” said the EU antitrust division’s former head.

Part of the explanation has to deal with how cases were allocated under the new system, according to Lasserre, the French competition chief from 2004 to 2016: “No allocation rule was set out in Regulation 1/2003 … it was up to the authority that was the best placed to handle the case,” he said.

This created a strong sense of positive rivalry between national authorities, Lasserre felt, which according to Lowe “encouraged a degree of innovation in their laws.”

The most prominent example of such innovation is the German antitrust case against Facebook, where the Bundeskartellamt considered that a breach of data privacy law was an antitrust offense. The German competition watchdog eventually ordered the social network to change its data collection procedures in February.

All in all, the regulation acted as a confidence booster to national authorities: “It gave us wings,” Lasserre concluded.

It also led to a “very strong” decentralization of antitrust in Europe, according to Lasserre, allowing competition authorities to gain experience by managing “a very large number of cases.”

Antitrust becomes hip

According to Mundt, who was appointed head of the Bundeskartellamt in 2009, national authorities did not become more powerful, but their work became more visible: “The broader public audience became more and more interested,” he said.

And Mundt himself had no problem with the promotional parts of the business. “I was always keen to make our work visible and to explain to the public what we are doing and why we are doing it,” he said.

Some of the real-world cases also struck a chord with consumers.

For instance in 2014, the Bundeskartellamt fined a beer cartel €338 million and a sausage cartel €338.5 million. In Spain, the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia issued €171 million in fines in a car parts cartel in 2015, and €128 million in the adult diapers cartel in 2016.

This surge in cartel cases would not have been possible without the introduction of new fining guidelines and leniency programs in 2006. These regulatory changes allowed national authorities to uncover more cartels and to set higher fines.

Visibility also grew, as the antitrust world simply became more populous. Jonathan Faull, a former EU senior official, noted that there was “the never ending ballet of congresses, colloquia, the lawyers who revolve around them, the relatively recent newsletters, and social media.”

“It’s trendy, yes, trendy!”

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The Duchess of Sussex has launched “privately funded” legal action against a British tabloid newspaper after it published a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father.

The decision to begin High Court action against the Mail on Sunday came as Prince Harry went public with a defence of his wife, saying he could no longer be a “silent witness to her private suffering.”

Emphasising his respect for the importance of “objective, truthful reporting”, the Queen’s grandson accused parts of the media of “waging campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences” and compared the treatment of Meghan to coverage of his mother, Princess Diana.

The duke wrote that his “deepest fear is history repeating itself” and the time had come for “accountability” over the treatment of his wife. He continued:

For its part, a spokesperson from the paper said: “The Mail on Sunday stands by the story it published and will be defending this case vigorously. Specifically, we categorically deny that the Duchess’s letter was edited in any way that changed its meaning.”

The statement comes months after George Clooney warned the Duchess of Sussex, who was seven months pregnant at the time, was being “vilified and chased” by the press and was a victim of media attention much like Princess Diana had been.

Clooney said the media should “be a little kinder” to her. Clooney’s wife, Amal, attended the duchess’ baby shower and the Clooneys have vacationed with the Royal couple.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are currently winding up their 10-day tour of southern Africa. They are travelling with 13 assistants including a “social media officer” and a hairdresser for Markle.

The pair will return with baby Archie and their team of Royal assistants on a long-haul flight to the UK late on Wednesday.

Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: [email protected]

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Migration commissioner calls on EU countries to step up resettlement

Dimitris Avramopoulos urged member states to take in refugees evacuated from Libya in particular.

Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos has called on EU member states to resettle more vulnerable refugees from camps in third countries.

Speaking to German newspaper Die Welt, Avramopoulos urged EU countries to take in refugees evacuated from war-ravaged Libya to Niger in particular, given Niger’s limited capacity to host them.

“I call on all member states to step up their resettlement efforts and implement their commitments to take in refugees as soon as possible,” he said, adding: “It’s necessary to conduct more emergency evacuations from Libya.”

Following an EU-African Union summit in 2017, Niger began to accept evacuated refugees from Libya. Rwanda has also offered to take in evacuees, which Avramopoulos welcomed.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, 14 countries — including 10 EU member states — have pledged some 6,600 resettlement places for those evacuated from Libya to Niger as of August. But resettlement has progressed slowly, NGOs reported earlier this year.

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“We must make resettlement a priority if we want to support partner countries that have taken in refugees,”Avramopoulos said. “That’s also important to provide refugees who want to go to Europe with safe routes, so that they no longer have to fall back on dangerous and illegal sea and land routes.”

He added that overall, some 35,000 refugees had been resettled to the EU from third countries over the past two years.

“This is more than ever before,” Avramopoulos said. “But we must not become complacent. Resettlement should become the most important route to entering the European Union for those in need of protection.”

Moves to stop so many trucks traveling through the busy Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy have angered both sides, and raised alarm in Brussels.

Austria’s Tyrol region rolled out new traffic restrictions earlier this month, barring large trucks from leaving the motorway during set times.

Tyrol insists it’s acting to protect its people from the scourge of thousands of heavy transport trucks.

“Overcrowding in these areas in the last month represents a severe impairment of the quality of life and the security of the Tyrolean people and our guests,” said a spokesperson for the regional government.

The six-month pilot project is the latest in a series of emergency measures the Austrian region has implemented to curb the impact of freight traffic thundering toward the Brenner Pass. Other efforts include weekend and night bans, driving bans for specific sectors and the most polluting vehicles, and strict traffic limits.

But the restrictions challenge one of the EU’s core principles: the free movement of goods. That’s forcing Brussels to react.

As well as unnerving the EU, the traffic restrictions are also angering industry on both sides of the Alps.

“The block clearances alone lead to kilometer-long traffic jams and waiting times of three to five hours on the German side,” said Niels Beuck, director of the German logistics association DSLV. “The restrictions on transit traffic practiced by Austria constitute a barrier for the free movement of goods in Europe on one of the most important north-south links.”

Crisis talks

Tyrol’s announcement of more restrictions, including an intensification of bans for the most polluting vehicles in late October and a driving ban for new categories of goods in 2020, have injected new urgency into the debate.

At a July meeting in Berlin, German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer and his Austrian counterpart Andreas Reichhardt agreed with regional leaders from Bavaria and Tyrol to find common ground on a toll rate for trucks that would raise costs to dent the route’s attraction.

The leaders committed to come up with a first draft at an expert meeting planned for the end of August, as a part of a 10-point plan that will “create incentives for a shift from road to rail.”

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That’s a win for the Tyrol government, which has long lobbied its neighbors to raise road charges.

Last year marked the first time the volume of traffic passing through the Brenner surpassed that on French and Swiss Alpine passes combined — 2.4 million trucks passed through Brenner, while 2.37 million trucks opted for one of the other six main Alpine passages. That’s up from 1.56 million trucks in 2000.

“The numbers were seen as a problem when Austria joined the EU [in 1995],” said Markus Gansterer, policy officer for green mobility NGO VCÖ. “Now the problem is unbearable.”

Switzerland has been more successful in reducing traffic and shifting goods from road to rail. But unlike Switzerland, Austria is an EU member. “[The Swiss] do not have to obey all the rules of the EU,” Gansterer said.

Commission in a bind

Austria’s restrictions on transit traffic challenge one of the EU’s core principles — the freedom of movement.

“Discussions on the unilateral measures announced by Tyrol will continue with Austrian authorities,” a European Commission spokesperson said. The Commission is already investigating one of Austria’s latest emergency measures, the imposition of sectoral bans — covering goods like paper, cement, plaster, pipes, grain and liquid petroleum — which the country sent the Commission’s way in July.

Brussels has to balance concerns over health and environment against the freedom of movement.

The transit traffic “creates a real air quality issue,” a Commission spokesperson said, but “the measures to address this problem will have to be proportionate, with the smallest possible impact on the free movement of goods and people.”

“The fundamental argument from the EU and Germany is the freedom of trade, the freedom of movement,” Gansterer said. “EU membership is a very positive thing … but the rules that apply in the union are a problem.”

Waiting for railway salvation

The July summit of national and regional officials may have taken some of the heat out of the debate, as Scheuer had hoped — but it didn’t get Tyrol to budge on its driving bans.

“We won’t deviate one millimeter from our emergency measures,” Günther Platter, Tyrol’s governor, said after last month’s summit.

Platter has taken an increasingly hard line to what he says is inaction by Germany and Italy. “They’ve been making promises for decades,” he said. “But only one thing has happened since — the transit of trucks has increased.”

The long-term solution is to get freight off trucks and on to trains, but that’s still a long way in the future.

The completion date for the Brenner Base Tunnel, a new rail link that will connect Innsbruck in Austria with Franzensfeste in Italy and move freight transport underground, is set for 2025. But slow progress on the 64-kilometer tunnel’s access point in Germany means it could take years before rail can be a credible alternative.

“The fact is that Alpine transit traffic will continue to increase and existing infrastructure will not suffice,” DSLV’s Beuck said. “Rail is the only way to provide relief in the long run.”

This article is from POLITICO Pro: POLITICO’s premium policy service. To discover why thousands of professionals rely on Pro every day, email [email protected] for a complimentary trial.

It’s not all about Italy! 3 EU countries call for change to migration focus

Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria want more attention on eastern Mediterranean route.

The EU’s migration plans should focus on the eastern Mediterranean, not just Italy and Malta, three EU countries will say this week.

In a document, seen by POLITICO, that will be presented at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria complain that “in recent months the attention of EU Member States has been mainly focused on the Central Mediterranean, which has been thoroughly discussed at three ministerial meetings [in Helsinki, Paris and Valletta].”

They add that “the Eastern Mediterranean route was not properly addressed despite the fact that all relevant reports confirm the increasing, persisting trend of arrivals in this region.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, the interior ministers will discuss a deal reached last month by Germany, France, Italy and Malta for a voluntary temporary relocation mechanism for asylum seekers rescued in the Central Mediterranean. Those four countries would like other member states to sign up to the scheme they drew up in Malta, and see it as first step toward a more comprehensive EU migration pact.

While they don’t mention the Malta deal in their document, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria say the “latest figures verify that the biggest challenge Europe is faced with comes from the Eastern Mediterranean route.” They call for “an effective mechanism for relocation of persons arriving to front-line Member States along all migratory routes, when their capacity is either exhausted or overstretched.”

They quote figures from the European Commission and the European External Action Service showing that between August 19 and September 1 there were “1,369 [arrivals] through the Central Mediterranean route and 4,879 from the Eastern Mediterranean route. Similarly, between 2 and 9 September there were 736 arrivals through the Western Mediterranean/Atlantic route, 480 in the Central Mediterranean route and 2,707 through the Eastern Mediterranean route.”

Geopolitical factors, “including conflicts in the broader area, particularly in Syria, entail that we will most likely see a continuation of this alarming trend in the short to medium term,” they write, just as Turkey was given the green light by the U.S. to launch an offensive into northern Syria, which EU officials fear could further destabilize the region.

In March 2016 the EU reached a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of Syrian asylum seekers crossing into Europe, but the €6 billion envisaged in the deal has already been allocated and a discussion among the EU has started on further financing.

Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria stress that more money is needed as the deal with Turkey “is essential for managing effectively migratory flows towards the EU and its Member States, and in particular towards Turkey’s immediate neighbours.”

They add that the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean “should be given special attention when negotiating the relevant budget lines in the context of the next Multiannual Financial Framework [the EU’s long-term budget].”

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A key member of Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed European Commission team did not declare two loans worth nearly €1 million to MEPs scrutinizing her appointment because she said she did not believe the rules required her to do so, according to a letter seen by POLITICO.

Legislators on the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), which must scrutinize the Transport Commissioner-designate Rovana Plumb’s declaration of financial interests — and those of other proposed commissioners — have raised questions over whether the financial transactions could pose a potential conflict of interest.

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Marie Toussaint, a member of the committee and a French Green MEP, said some commissioners-designate initially provided declarations of financial interest to the committee “that were contradictory with declarations that were presented previously” and were therefore asked for an explanation.

In the case of Plumb, for example, there was “a significant difference between the one she presented to us and the one she declared in Romania,” Toussaint said.

The questions over Plumb’s financial interests could complicate her efforts to win Parliament’s approval. A veteran Romanian government minister, she already faces scrutiny over a 2017 corruption case, in which she was accused of aiding the leader of her Social Democratic Party in an illicit real estate deal involving an island in the Danube River.

She has previously denied any wrongdoing in that case and did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO on the new financial questions.

Closed-door meeting

Ahead of their confirmation hearings, 10 members of von der Leyen’s proposed team were asked by the committee to provide further information on whether their assets could lead to conflicts of interest in the performance of their duties. Committee members are set to determine at a closed-doors meeting Wednesday if the extra information — in the form of letters seen by POLITICO — passes muster.

If the committee deems it insufficient, they may decide to suspend that commissioner-designate’s confirmation hearing. The hearings are scheduled to take place between September 30 and October 8, with the new Commission expected to take office on November 1.

Under the Parliament’s rules, if the committee identifies a conflict of interest, it can draw up recommendations aimed at resolving the conflict — such as directing the nominee to renounce the financial interests in question or recommending changes to the candidate’s portfolio. “In more serious cases,” the committee can conclude “on the inability of Commissioner-designate to exercise his/her function.”

In a letter addressed to Lucy Nethsingha, the chair, Plumb argued that neither loan had to be declared under the Code of Conduct for commissioners. In the letter, she confirmed that she included an €800,000 loan received in 2007 — to be paid back by 2030 — in the declaration of assets she submitted to the Romanian parliament when she was an MP.

She said she did not include it in the EU financial declaration because loans for the purchase of real estate for private purposes do not “normally” have to be declared under the Commission’s code. In the case of a donation of 800,000 Romanian lei (almost €170,000) she made to her Social Democratic Party ahead of the European election this year, she said it did not generate any conflicts of interest or constitute an investment or placement on the market.

Plumb says she received the money for the donation as a loan from an individual she does not name in the submission to the Commission, although she said the lender had been registered with the Romanian parliament. According to that parliament’s register of financial interests, the loan is due to be paid back over two years.

According to the Code of Conduct, commissioners-designate are obliged to declare any financial interests, including assets and liabilities, “which could be considered to be capable of giving rise to a conflict of interest. Bank accounts, specific goods or loans for the purchase of real estate for private purposes do normally not have to be declared. Investments of a value of more than EUR 10 000 have to be declared in all cases.”

Some MEPs argued that Plumb’s financial situation raises potential financial conflicts of interest. Daniel Freund, a German MEP and former head of EU advocacy at NGO Transparency International, said he regards Plumb’s letter to the committee as unsatisfactory.

“She did not answer the questions of the Parliament, and she did not take away any of the concerns,” said Freund, who serves as the Greens/EFA group’s coordinator in the Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is responsible for ethics rules.

“She merely says that different rules in Romania and in the European Commission lead to differences in the declaration,” he said, adding that the submission does not explain her “financial situation, donations to her party, loans where nobody knows how she manages to pay them back.”

Referring to the earlier corruption allegations, Daniel Caspary, a prominent German MEP from the center-right European People’s Party, said: “If the things that circulate come true, then we have a serious problem.”

Financial interests

Nine others from von der Leyen’s proposed team were asked by the committee for more information. The nominee for foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said in his letter to the committee dated September 23 that he had been asked to “consider the possibility of disposing of my shares in Bayer, Iberdrola and BBVA in order to prevent any conflict of interest.”

He wrote: “I have not considered this possibility so far, since these shares represent a small amount of my financial assets. More importantly, the sectors of activity of these companies (renewable energies, pharmaceutical and banking) are not related with the responsibilities for which I have been designated.”

Health nominee Stella Kyriakides wrote in her letter dated September 20 that “as of last Friday,” she had sold her “bonds” in the Starbucks Corporation. She also resigned “with immediate effect” from the breast cancer patients group Europa Donna Cyprus and the Miracle Babies association, which helps infants born prematurely.

Portugal’s Elisa Ferreira, the proposed nominee for cohesion and reforms, confirmed in her letter that she had decided to “sell the shares” she had in the Portugal-based company Sonae. The shares’ value amounted to €13,789 on September 19.

France’s Sylvie Goulard, the commissioner-designate for the single market, explained in her letter dated September 23 why her declaration of interests submitted as a member of the European Parliament is different to the one she submitted as a commissioner-designate.

“I scrupulously declared to the European Parliament some activities before taking them up, which turned out to be non-existent,” Goulard wrote.

Didier Reynders, Belgium’s foreign minister and proposed justice commissioner, was asked to clarify “the field of activities” of his SICAV, a collective investment fund in Belgium. “The investor has no influence on the investment choices made by the SICAV’s managers,” Reynders wrote in his letter, which came with a 44-page annex.

Other commissioners-designate who sent additional information on their finances include the Czech Republic’s Věra Jourová, Poland’s Janusz Wojciechowski, and Lithuania’s Virginijus Sinkevičius.

Despite the committee’s work in scrutinizing the nominees’ financial declarations, Freund said that ultimately, the committee is likely to wave through any potential conflicts of interests because it “neither has the time nor the resources to properly investigate conflicts of interests.” The committee can only examine financial declarations. It cannot carry out investigations.

“The current procedure is not enough to scrutinize the future Commission thoroughly,” Freund added. “That’s why we need an independent ethics body that will investigate any possible violations of ethical conduct and sanction offenders.”

Toussaint echoed Freund’s remarks, saying the committee’s examination is “only an initial filter.”

“The work we do is incomplete, and we don’t even interfere into any political issue,” Toussaint said.

Carmen Paun and Hans von der Burchard contributed reporting.

Commission nominees face grilling over finances

Romanian and Hungarian choices have some explaining to do to MEPs.

Two of the more controversial nominees for the next European Commission will appear before MEPs on Thursday to answer questions about potential conflicts of interest.

According to an internal European Parliament note, seen by POLITICO, Rovana Plumb of Romania and László Trócsányi of Hungary will be grilled by members of the Legal Affairs Committee, which is scrutinizing the financial affairs of Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed team.

The MEPs decided Wednesday to call in Plumb, who is slated to get the transport portfolio, to explain why she didn’t declare two loans worth nearly €1 million to the Parliament. One of the loans was for a real estate purchase and the other for a political donation to her Social Democratic Party.

“It was decided that further clarification is needed on this and that she will be invited to come to the committee meeting tomorrow to answer questions,” according to the note.

MEPs will also quiz Trócsányi, who has been assigned the neighborhood and enlargement portfolio, about a law firm he founded in 1991.

“The Greens asked for the discussion to be reopened and raised a lot of issues related to his law firm and its connections with the Hungarian government,” the note said. Trócsányi is a former justice minister under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Earlier this month, Trócsányi told POLITICO in a text message that “in 1991 at the moment of the foundation of Law Offices Nagy és Trócsányi my shares in it were equal to 1/3. This participation shrunk over time and today it is 0.”

The official hearings of von der Leyen’s team are scheduled to take place between September 30 and October 8, with the new Commission expected to take office on November 1. The European Parliament has to sign off on the entire team.

If the two prospective commissioners can’t satisfy the MEPs about their financial dealings, the committee could recommend they shouldn’t get roles under von der Leyen.

On Wednesday, MEPs also agreed to ask Austria’s Johannes Hahn, the proposed budget commissioner, to sell the shares he holds in several companies. In a letter to the Legal Affairs Committee chair, seen by POLITICO, Hahn said he has shares in banks including the Erste Group and Raiffeisen Bank International and he has had “the same amount of shares [since] well before I took office” as a European commissioner in 2010.

MEPs will also ask for “additional information” from Janusz Wojciechowski of Poland, nominated as the agriculture commissioner, regarding an apartment he owns in Brussels. The European People’s Party said “there are still inconsistencies related to the apartment in Brussels that need to be further clarified,” according to the parliamentary note.

Several other commissioners-designate — Spain’s Josep Borrell, France’s Sylvie Goulard, Belgium’s Didier Reynders, the Czech Republic’s Věra Jourová and Portugal’s Elisa Ferreira — were given the all-clear on potential conflicts of interest by the Parliament committee. However, the note said the far-left GUE group “tried to re-open the discussion” on Goulard’s connections to the Berggruen Institute, a U.S.-based think tank. Goulard, a former French defense minister slated to be the single market commissioner, declared she had earned $300,000 over three years from the institute.

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The committee’s process of scrutiny is “absolutely not serious,” said Manon Aubry, a French GUE member of the committee. “We have no means to investigate and verify information.”

“The whole procedure is extremely politicized with blocs defending their candidates,” she said. “There are double standards from one candidate to another.”

Lili Bayer contributed reporting.

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STRASBOURG — Members of the European Parliament lashed out Thursday at EU leaders for their handling of nominations for the bloc’s top jobs as the battle to confirm Ursula von der Leyen as the next Commission president heats up.

It is far from clear if MEPs — despite many of them being furious at the European Council for killing the Spitzenkandidat or “lead candidate” process — will reject von der Leyen, the German defense minister who is a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel. But a vote Wednesday that elected David-Maria Sassoli as president of the European Parliament indicates that von der Leyen could be short of the absolute majority needed for ratification.

At a plenary debate in Strasbourg, leading MEPs reacted angrily to the leadership package put forward by the European Council after 48 hours of marathon negotiations earlier this week. They criticized not only the surprise nomination of von der Leyen, and the rejection of the three lead candidates put forward by the EU’s biggest political families, but also the choice of Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel for Council president, IMF chief Christine Lagarde as head of the European Central Bank and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell to be high representative for foreign affairs.

As MEPs complained about the nominations, von der Leyen held talks in Brussels with current Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk. She did not make any public comments or speak to reporters but tweeted: “My priorities will be to seek smart advice, listen to all parliamentary groups and together work out the best plan for the future of Europe.”

MEPs are set to vote on von der Leyen’s nomination in the week of July 15.

There were early indications that MEPs from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), of which von der Leyen is a member, would fall in loyally behind her — despite the conservatives having championed the Spitzenkandidat process and repeatedly demanded the appointment of their nominee, German MEP Manfred Weber.

The liberal-centrist Renew Europe group, backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, also seemed likely to support her, largely because the leadership deal delivered them the Council presidency, in the hands of Michel, and also a senior Commission vice presidency post for Margrethe Vestager, the liberal lead candidate who currently serves as competition commissioner.

But the conservatives and liberals do not control enough votes to deliver the needed absolute majority, and support for von der Leyen among the center-left Social Democrats and the Greens is less certain.

As debate opened in the plenary, MEPs complained bitterly that the “top jobs” package was designed behind closed doors, and defied the Spitzenkandidat system that they had initiated and fought hard to maintain.

Last year, the Parliament even adopted a resolution declaring that it is ready to reject any nominee put forward by the Council who had not participated in the election campaign as a lead candidate — but that resolution was not binding on new MEPs and many of those who voted for it now seemed prepared to abandon the pledge.

Some MEPs also expressed anger at the Council for taking the liberty to suggest that a Social Democrat be elected as president of the Parliament, to ensure balance among political families in the overall leadership package.

The Council technically has no control over whom the Parliament chooses. However, MEPs acquiesced to the Council’s direction, and on Wednesday they elected Sassoli barely 12 hours after nominations were submitted.

The result showed a remarkable turnabout — from the Parliament insisting that it should effectively control the selection of Commission president through the Spitzenkandidat process, to the Council dictating not only who would get the EU’s top job, but also which political family should lead the Parliament.

However, Sassoli’s election also indicated possible trouble for von der Leyen. He clinched the Parliament presidency with 345 votes — but von der Leyen will need at least 375 votes to be confirmed as Commission president. Sassoli’s total was also about 100 votes short of the number of MEPs who belong to political parties that backed the leadership package in the European Council.

Conservatives critical

Even some conservatives who were likely to vote for the Council’s package voiced anger at how the process had played out.

“Council doesn’t have the right to ignore all of the candidates that have been voted for by European citizens,” said Esteban González Pons, a Spanish MEP and vice president of the EPP. “You are telling the European Parliament who they should nominate as president of our chamber. You are now at the point of deciding who is going to be at the European Central Bank, as if that was one more political nomination.”

“This is not democracy,” González Pons said. “I would urge you to think deeply: The future of Europe can no longer be decided behind closed doors and through secret plots.”

Despite these complaints, González Pons said his group would support von der Leyen because “we accept our responsibility, because we want to see a person leading the Commission who will be able to defend and fight for EU interests.”

Philippe Lamberts, the co-leader of the Greens in Parliament, was even more blunt. He argued that the Council had engaged in “five days of inglorious bargaining” where “partisan and national reasoning took precedence over the project and its incarnation.”

“All of this resulted in a distribution of roles that makes us doubt the ability to initiate the change which our societies need,” Lamberts added.

A Green official said the group would wait to meet von der Leyen, and hear her pitch, before making up its mind about whether it would approve her or not.

Iratxe García, the new leader of the center-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group, was less critical of the Council but she also defended the Spitzenkandidat process. Her group, she said, believes its candidate Frans Timmermans should have led the Commission and declared the Dutch politician was rejected “because he defended rule of law in the Union, and our values.”

García’s comment was a reference to the opposition Timmermans faced from Hungary and Poland. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in particular, declared he had killed Timmermans’ chances.

Under a plan that the Council debated through Sunday night and into Monday morning, Timmermans would have been named Commission president. But in the end, Eastern Europeans, with help from others including Italy and Ireland, blocked that plan.

The S&D has not decided if it will support von der Leyen’s nomination. An S&D spokesperson said “we will continue our discussions in group next week and will also meet with her in our group.”

Tusk’s pitch

During the plenary, Council President Donald Tusk defended the leadership package, insisting that his own consultations with parliamentary leaders means the proposal was effectively a joint decision, and he urged MEPs to support it.

“Before the European Council proposed the new leadership of the Union, I met with your representatives many times,” Tusk said. “I did it not only out of respect for you, but above all, to make sure that the decisions are truly common.”

Tusk boasted that the Council’s decision was made far faster than five years ago, and he characterized the nomination of two women — von der Leyen and Lagarde — as a historic achievement.

“I believe they are good choices,” Tusk said, adding. “I feel happy and proud that we have achieved perfect gender balance in the top positions.”

Leaders are hoping that MEPs, even if angry over the process, will be reluctant to torpedo the package because they would be seen as rejecting the two women.

Tusk also made a special appeal to the Greens, an acknowledgement that their support could be crucial to clinching ratification of von der Leyen’s nomination.

He said he would appeal to EU leaders to involve Greens in nominations for other senior EU posts. “I am fully confident that cooperation with the Greens and their presence in the EU decision-making bodies will benefit not only the governing coalition, but Europe as a whole,” Tusk said.

Tusk can at least already count on the support of the Renew Europe group. The group said earlier this week that it is ready to approve von der Leyen’s nomination.

In a speech, Dacian Cioloș, the Romanian MEP who leads the group, didn’t criticize the Council directly, but insisted that the liberals would push for transnational lists as a way to resurrect the Spitzenkandidat process and create the possibility of what he said would be genuine pan-European campaigns.

“Now we can discuss names, we can discuss gender balance, we can discuss geographic balance for as long as we don’t have a transparent democratic process for selecting those who lead Europe, we will not achieve satisfaction,” Cioloș told MEPs.

After leading MEPs spoke, the euro-critical parties in the chamber targeted the entire nomination process as a reflection of the EU’s struggles.

Marco Zanni, the leader of the Euroskeptic Identity and Democracy group, ridiculed the ” internal institutional wrangling” after the nominations. But his group, he said, would “await the outlines of the program” before deciding whether to back von der Leyen.

“Early indications hardly augur a strong change as sought by EU citizens the 26th of May,” he added.

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Paul Scholes reckons that if Jose Mourinho had been in the Chelsea dugout last night then Harry Maguire would have been sent off in Manchester United’s 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge.

Frank Lampard lamented “confusing” Video Assistant Referee (VAR) decisions after Maguire avoided punishment for kicking Michy Batshuayi in the groin area, before the United skipper then thumped in a second-half header to seal the victory.

Anthony Martial also scored for United as they recorded a first league double over Chelsea for 32 years.

16 Conclusions: Chelsea 0-2 Man United

Kurt Zouma and Olivier Giroud saw Chelsea goals chalked off by VAR in a hugely frustrating night for the Blues.

But Scholes thinks Chelsea’s staff were too passive in their reaction to the Maguire incident, which took place right in front of the dugouts.

“I think the reaction from the Chelsea bench could have been a bit more aggressive,” Scholes said (via the Metro).

“I think if Mourinho is on the Chelsea bench he would be going ballistic and been holding his hand up [waving a card].”

Chelsea could have opened up a nine-point gap on the Red Devils with victory, but instead Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men cut the deficit to just three points on the fourth-placed Blues.

“We’re in fourth place by one point, so the season starts here and we need to fight to get fourth place,” Lampard said after the loss.

“We’re fourth and it’s still in our hands. I don’t think many people would have put us in fourth place at this point in the season, so the fight starts now.”

 

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