Catherine Day to stay

The European Commission’s top staffer will keep her job a while longer.

As Brussels awaits the result of a high-stakes reshuffling of top European Commission staff expected to be announced by President Jean-Claude Juncker at the end of June, one name is locked in.

Catherine Day, the Commission’s secretary general since 2005, is going to stay on in the powerful position, according to Commission sources, but will almost certainly not serve out the full five-year term of the current Commission. She has told an EU peer that she may leave as early as in 2016. 

Day had been thought to be preparing for transition to academia or to retirement after an unusually long 10-year run as the most senior civil servant post in the EU executive, but Juncker asked her to stay on, the sources said.

Contacted by POLITICO to ask about her decision, Day said only that it was her policy not to reply for requests to comment about personnel matters.

Juncker took office in November 2014 with a promise to shake up the way the Commission does business — streamlining not only how it makes laws but also its organizational chart. He has already restructured the executive, creating a two-tiered system that puts most decision-making power in the hands of seven vice presidents who oversee the work of Commissioners. 

Now he is working on a new roster of top officials, the 35 directors-general who run the Commission’s main policy portfolios. Currently only six of these positions are held by women (nine of the 28 Commissioners are women).

For the last decade, Day has been at the head of that short list of top female EU staffers. The 60-year-old Irish national served during parts of three different Commissions, first under President José Manuel Barroso and now under Juncker.

“Juncker quite likes her,” a Commission official said of Day in explaining the decision to ask her to stay. “She was very helpful during the transition.”

Other officials told POLITICO that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who came into office the same year that Day was named secretary general, got to know her at the regular EU summits and is fond of her. 

Day, who is just the fifth person to hold the Secretary General post since it was created in 1957, is a Commission-lifer. She began her career in the institution in 1979, working in a variety of key jobs including deputy chief of staff to UK Commissioner Leon Brittan, and director positions on external relations and EU enlargement. From 2002 to 2005, she was the Commission’s director general for environment.

Jockeying for top Commission jobs combines bureaucratic intrigue and political horse-trading with issues of national and, now, gender balance. By keeping the respected Day on at the top for the time being, Juncker can avoid at least one potential headache as he seeks to fill the rest of the DG jobs to everyone’s satisfaction. 

“President Juncker has said himself the basic element for this should be the right chemistry and empathy between people. Between the generals and commissioners,” Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said. “What is equally important is an increased number of women. This process is ongoing and it will be finalized in June.” 

But there may have been other forces at work. A commission spokesperson denied that Merkel had made any direct appeals to Juncker to keep Day on, but others said it made sense that the German chancellor would see the benefit of continuity in that role.

For one thing, Day worked closely with Uwe Corsepius, the secretary general of the Council of Ministers, who is leaving for Berlin later this month to work as Merkel’s top European affairs advisor.

“[Day and Merkel] have a lot of respect for each other,” said Florian Koebele, a German political analyst and former official in the Commission’s Secretariat General. “They have a good cooperation. From the way they are thinking, they are both rather cautious people and not impulsive.”

Another reason that sticking with Day makes sense for the Commission is that it leaves out the thorny national politics that often come into play when filling the post — and it means that Merkel can rest easy that someone she likes is in the job, without having to push for a German candidate to fill a vacancy.

“There is a perceived sense that the Germans already have a lot of DG spots, so to keep [Day] would keep that conversation away from ‘another German,’” said an official in the Council.

Sources said the Italians were vying for the plum post, as they currently only have two DGs on the current list after having lost two DGs in the past year. Italy’s permanent representative to the EU, Stefano Sannino, was among the other candidates said to be considered for Day’s job. Sannino told POLITICO that to his knowledge “the post has never been ‘advertised,’ neither formally nor informally.”

Also considered for the post was Alexander Italianer, currently the director general for competition policy. Italianer, who is Dutch, declined to comment. 

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Another Commission staff veteran, Jonathan Faull, the British director-general of Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, was vying for the promotion. His passport and seniority hurt him, according to a senior EU diplomat. If Juncker and his Chief of Staff Martin Selmayr were going to make a change, this diplomat said, they prefer to go with someone from the next generation of senior Commission officials. Now this decision has been put off for at least a year, according to officials. 

Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this article.

This story has been updated.