Slovenia’s No. 1 Trump fan hijacks EU power transition

LITHUANIA IS FLAGGING: A gust of wind took out the Lithuanian flag that normally flies alongside 26 others outside the European Parliament in Brussels, before staffers were sent to fix it.
ONE FOR THE GRAM: Twenty commissioners lined up for a photo to mark the 2500th meeting of the College of Commissioners, with the eternal Maroš Šefčovič posting the pics. “And he attended all of them. Almost,” quipped Euronews’ Gerardo Fortuna.
Bell of the Berlaymont: To mark the historic occasion, the Commission also published a video about the 11cm bell the Commission president rings to kick off the weekly meetings. Its magical name? “The bell.” Fascinating stuff. When’s the feature-length documentary coming out?
GOOD THURSDAY MORNING. Your self-appointed town crier (replete with imaginary bell) Eddy Wax is back with you to see out the week.
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SLOVENIAN POPULIST THREATENS TO DELAY COMMISSION START: The national politics of Slovenia, a country of 2 million people, is reaching all the way into the heart of Brussels and could further delay the start of the new European Commission. The person weaponizing it? Janez Janša, the country’s Trump-loving populist former prime minister and now opposition leader.
Move over Orbán, Janša’s back: Ljubljana is the only EU government yet to formally nominate a commissioner after swapping its male candidate Tomaž Vesel for a woman, Marta Kos. Kos’ nomination isn’t complete until a parliamentary committee signs off on it. That committee is chaired by a Janša ally, whose party is refusing to schedule the meeting, as things stand.
The delay could last up to 2 weeks. Ljubljana, and the EU as a whole, is in waiting mode.
Slow-venia: President Ursula von der Leyen already pushed back her plans to unveil her next Commission this week, noting a Slovenian-shaped hole in the line-up. According to the EU treaties, the Council needs a complete list of names for the process to kick off in earnest.
Janša appears angry over the Kos switcheroo, and is dead set against her as the commissioner. Franc Breznik, his ally and chair of Slovenia’s EU affairs committee, is demanding to see a letter von der Leyen reportedly sent to Robert Golob, the country’s liberal prime minister, rejecting Vesel, who subsequently withdrew his candidacy, amid her push for more women in her top team.
Point scoring: The opposition, which has swung rather belatedly behind Vesel, wants to force the government to say the quiet part out loud: that Vesel didn’t want to resign but was forced to by Golob, who himself was pressured by von der Leyen.
Commission building gets political: “I think it is our right to know what President Ursula von der Leyen requested from the government and why the government decided to switch the candidate. That is the basic rule of transparency,” said Matej Tonin, an opposition MEP from the New Slovenia party.
Janša vs. VDL: Janša’s SDS party is — ironically enough — a member of von der Leyen’s very own political family, the center-right European People’s Party. But there’s no love lost between them. Janša’s MEPs voted against von der Leyen as the Spitzenkandidat earlier this year. Here’s how MEP Romana Tomc, a Janša loyalist, said she’s explaining her party’s stance to her EPP colleagues.
Having a ball: “We have to take account that now [Janša] is a figure in the European field again and he’s enjoying [it]. He’s the same mindset as Orbán,” said Slovenian S&D MEP Matjaž Nemec. “He can make the life of von der Leyen quite difficult.” 
Nostra culpa: Wednesday’s Playbook got Nemec’s nationality wrong — our apologies!
Damage control mode: PM Golob accused Janša of playing a cynical political game “just for the sake of delay.” The prime minister said he’d spoken to von der Leyen and assured her “the procedures in Europe won’t suffer because of this.” Erm, von der Leyen has been explicit on how they already have. Golob also said there had been no reputational damage to Slovenia as a result of the shenanigans. If you have to say it … 
Empty Vesel: Breznik — the committee chair who holds the key to Kos’ nomination — told Playbook: “We have witnesses who prove that Golob put pressure on Vesel to resign and to lie in public that he [Vesel] resigned himself.”  Breznik said he was ready to schedule the committee meeting to confirm Kos Friday at 10 a.m. … on the condition he sees that letter.
Who would have thought? No one could have seen this Slovenian drama coming … except maybe one person: von der Leyen herself. Surely she’d have known that by pressuring Slovenia to switch candidates, she was creating fertile ground for this kind of national politicking? 
Playing with fire: It’s also perhaps a cautionary lesson for MEPs thinking of shooting down Hungary’s commissioner pick, Olivér Várhelyi. Do they really want to give Viktor Orbán an opportunity to further delay and disrupt the start of the next European Commission? 
From embarrassment to enlargement? Speculation is also rife that Slovenia could be in for the enlargement portfolio, a role where an ex-Yugoslav country could spread EU influence in the Western Balkans. It seems there is more to the speculation than the mere fact that von der Leyen mentioned she’ll have a commissioner for enlargement on a recent trip to Slovenia. One person involved in the negotiation told Playbook that enlargement had been offered to Ljubljana. 
Was that perchance the deal? Give me a woman, and I’ll give you enlargement? If Breznik gets his letter, maybe we’ll find out. (More on the Commission puzzle below.)
SPAIN SIDES WITH CHINA AGAINST EU ON TARIFFS: Et tu Pedro? In a dramatic intervention, the Spanish PM asked Europe on Wednesday to “reconsider” tariffs on made-in-China electric vehicles — exactly what Beijing has been seeking, write Stuart Lau and Koen Verhelst.
Sino the times: It’s a huge crack in the EU’s unity as it edges into a brutal trade skirmish with Beijing following the Commission’s move to slap tariffs on Chinese-made cars being sold in the bloc.
Slamming it into reverse: “We need to reconsider — all of us, not only member states, but also the Commission — our position towards” EVs, said Pedro Sánchez, who also hailed Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “defender of peace” during his trip to Beijing earlier this week.  
Jamón eléctrico: The EU fears the impact of highly subsidized Chinese electric cars flooding its domestic car industry. But Sánchez is probably keener to avoid Chinese retaliation on Spanish pork exports, or to attract Chinese greenfield investments in Spain. 
Dreaming of electric Xi: Noah Barkin, senior adviser of the Rhodium Group and an EU-China expert, described Sánchez’s intervention as “embarrassing,” adding: “Reversing course on a policy issue that is so central to European credibility and leverage with Beijing so late in the game, and during a trip to China to boot, is a damning indictment of Sánchez’s foreign policy mettle and sophistication.”
BRAZIL TAKES AX TO EU DEFORESTATION LAW: Meanwhile, Brazil is ramping up pressure against the EU’s new anti-deforestation rules, referring to them as a “unilateral and punitive instrument” in a spicy letter penned by its foreign and agriculture ministers, and obtained here by my colleague Camille Gijs. 
IS KEIR DIFFERENT? Keir Starmer says he wants to “reset” his country’s relationship with Europe, but EU officials and diplomats told my colleague Jon Stone they doubt the new U.K. prime minister is all that keen on walking back on mending fences.
DUTCH DANGLE NEW RIGHT-HAND MAN FOR HOEKSTRA: Regardless of which portfolio Wopke Hoekstra gets in the next Commission, the Dutch government wants former MEP Han ten Broeke, a center-right liberal, to replace his current chief of staff Esther de Lange (a Christian Democrat like Hoekstra himself). Heads of Cabinet are among the elite political officials in the Brussels matrix.
Pole position: Ten Broeke is currently chairman of Dutch automotive lobby group BOVAG and heads the political division of The Hague Center for Strategic Studies think tank. More importantly, he’s a member of the VVD, one of the four coalition parties in the Geert Wilders-dominated Cabinet that took office in the Netherlands this summer. The switch would be part of a deal with the Dutch government to keep Hoekstra in the European Commission, despite his party being in opposition in The Hague, Barbara Moens writes in to report. The move was first reported by Dutch-language EU bubble website Brusselse Nieuwe. 
Ten-DA: A 12-year stint in the Dutch parliament ended for ten Broeke in 2018, amid revelations he’d had an “unequal” relationship with a party assistant in 2013. The woman, who was 25 at the time, accused ten Broeke, then 44, of sexually deviant behavior but didn’t press charges. The two signed a non-disclosure agreement, but when the story broke, he stepped down. 
An official close to Hoekstra called ten Broeke’s appointment “speculation,” adding: “we are waiting for the portfolio allocations and only then we will start [to] look into the formation of the team.”
DID RENEW LEAK HANSEN’S PORTFOLIO? “I have met the Commissioner-designate for Agriculture Christophe Hansen,” Renew MEP and European Parliament Vice President Martin Hojsík wrote on X Wednesday, alongside a photo of the pair.
Horse … stable door … bolted? The rumor mill immediately started up, my colleague Paula Andrés writes in to report. Had the Parliament, fed up with the wait, taken it upon itself to start assigning portfolios? Had Hojsík let the cat out the bag?
A “likely” story: Contacted by Paula, Hojsík said he had mistakenly posted the message without adding the word “likely” before “commissioner.” In any case, he added, “nothing is valid” until it’s announced by von der Leyen. Hansen, Luxembourg’s Commission nominee, is the front-runner for the farm portfolio.
Fun fact: Luxembourg has fewer than 2,000 farms, vs. 456,000 in France.
BUILDING PRESSURE OVER HOUSING COMMISSIONER: Seventeen organizations from the construction, environmental and non-profit sectors are calling for a new European commissioner for housing with a broad enough portfolio to speed up renovation and sustainability, reports Playbook’s Šejla Ahmatović.
Red roofs: Ursula von der Leyen announced in the summer there’d be a commissioner whose remit covered housing, in a political concession to Europe’s socialists. Without such a portfolio, the EU “will not meet our climate targets and our homes, workplaces and schools will continue to worsen the climate crisis,” argued Thomas Trevisan of ECOS, one of the signatories of a manifesto set to launch Friday. While the organizations acknowledge housing is ultimately a matter for national governments, there are elements in which the EU does have standing, such as buildings’ energy performance.
U.N. URGES EU TO HELP POOR COUNTRIES REACH GREEN GOALS: U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Kanni Wignaraja told Playbook during a flying visit to Brussels that the EU can’t expect poorer countries to meet Green Deal standards without help.
Invest to get Green Deal traction: If the EU wants to implement its Green Deal, which has such “high standards for developing countries, and on the poorer end of developing countries,” then it needs to “invest in the development of those institutions, the meeting of those standards in those countries,” she said, after a day of meetings with the EU’s top development officials. “You can’t just put in a Green Deal and then expect suddenly some of the poorest countries in the world to say ‘voilà, look at me now I’m all green.’”
Don’t give up now: Wignaraja also urged the EU and its members to stay engaged in countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh and others where there has been an “unconstitutional change of government” or breakdown of the social contract.
Fail to invest, get migrants: “There’s almost a global moral call to stay in. And that is also in the self-interest because people don’t flee their borders when they’re hungry … They flee because they’re scared,” said Wignaraja, who is the director for the Asia and Pacific at the U.N. Development Program.
PARLIAMENT’S WHISTLEBLOWER FAILINGS: If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more revelations about politicians getting up to no good in the European Parliament, have a look at this ruling from the EU’s top court Wednesday. It highlighted the fact that MEPs’ assistants who witness their bosses’ bad behavior risk losing their jobs if they speak out, my colleague Elisa Braun writes in to report.
What happened: An MEP’s assistant reported allegations of harassment and financial misconduct by his boss. While his identity was kept confidential in court documents and he was reassigned to another MEP’s office, he said his details were subsequently exposed and his contract not renewed. He appealed to the European Parliament, accusing the institution of denying him whistleblower status and failing to protect him, but his claim was rejected. He took the matter to the EU’s General Court, which partially ruled in his favor.
Red card: The European Parliament “did not take all the measures necessary to ensure that a whistleblower had balanced and effective protection” against retaliation, the court found. But the court also said the decision not to extend the man’s contract was lawful due to the requirement of mutual trust between an assistant and their MEP. The EU Observer has a write-up.
MEANWHILE, IN POLAND: Ryszard Czarnecki, a former Polish vice president of the European Parliament, was detained at Warsaw airport on Wednesday in connection with a private university scandal, Csongor Körömi reports.
AND IN ALBANIA … Prosecutors indicted the country’s ex-PM Sali Berisha on corruption charges. Reuters has more.
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GREECE NOT IMPRESSED WITH SCHOLZ’S MIGRATION MOVE: Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis slammed Germany’s decision to impose new border controls, saying on Wednesday that Athens won’t accept “having to shoulder a disproportionately large burden.”
WHILE YOU WERE ENJOYING YOUR SUMMER HOLIDAY … Slovakia’s government was dismantling corruption-fighting institutions, reports POLITICO’s Ketrin Jochecová.
FRENCH GOVERNMENT LATEST: Victor Goury-Laffont and Giorgio Leali explain the four types of ministers new French PM Michel Barnier needs to survive. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen has a dilemma: Tolerate Barnier or unleash the dogs.
UKRAINE WEAPONS LATEST: The White House is finalizing a plan to ease some restrictions on how Ukraine can use U.S.-donated weapons, my Stateside colleagues report. But while Kyiv had hoped U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would make an announcement during his trip to Kyiv on Wednesday, that didn’t happen.
HARRIS VS. TRUMP DEBATE FALLOUT — THINK BEFORE YOU TWEET? The German Foreign Office’s sassy response to Donald Trump’s criticism of the country’s energy policy during his election debate with Kamala Harris landed like a lead balloon in MAGA World. (Trump confidant and former U.S. Ambassador to Berlin Richard Grenell, for one, took aim at what he called “blatant election interference.”) Our Berlin Playbook colleagues report the Foreign Office is now in damage control, amid fears Trump could still win the election.
Now hear this: This week’s edition of POLITICO’s Power Play podcast features an interview with John B. Emerson, a Harris-backer and former ambassador to Germany, who talks Putin, Harris and Trump.
— European Council President Charles Michel in Bahrain.
— European Central Bank’s Governing Council holds a monetary policy meeting in Frankfurt; press conference by ECB President Christine Lagarde at 2:45 p.m.
— EU High Representative Josep Borrell in Lebanon to meet with Lebanese officials including Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Commander of the Armed Forces Joseph Khalil Aoun, parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
— Jobs Commissioner Nicolas Schmit represents the EU at the G7 Labour and Employment Ministers Meeting in Cagliari, Italy.
— Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager delivers a keynote speech at the Danish Chamber of Commerce.
WEATHER: High of 14C, rainy in the afternoon.
INDUSTRY GIANTS UNDER THE BIG TENT: First, they teamed up on policy, with the Antwerp Declaration. The next logical step for some of Brussels’ biggest trade associations: Partying together. Horrible weather ruined the intended “garden reception” vibe on the grounds of the Institute of Natural Sciences, but sturdy tents big enough to fit 1,800 were enough for these 15 umbrella groups to hold the 1,000+ registered guests.
Neutral parties: POLITICO Europe’s Editor-in-Chief Jamil Anderlini (aka Playbook’s boss) turned out to be the consensus choice for addressing the group — along with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
Correcting the record: After Anderlini called De Croo the “outgoing” prime minister, the Belgian offered a note of caution: “Outgoing prime minister … maybe one day. It might take some time.” 
No one questioned this line: Anderlini’s quip that Brussels is the “Silicon Valley of regulation” was a hit.
Also spotted by Playbook’s moles at the party: Deputy Director General of DG ENV Patrick Child, MEP Virginijus Sinkevičius, CEO of Syensqo Ilham Kadri, CEFIC boss Marco Mensink, ACEA Director General Sigrid de Vries, A.I.S.E.’s Alexis Van Maercke, AmCham’s Susan Danger, AIM Director General Michelle Gibbons, among others.
CITY OF DESIGN: Brussels Design September returns with more than 100 events, showcasing the intersection of art and design through exhibitions, workshops, and discussions. Starts today. Details here.
FUSION MUSIC: The Marni Jazz Festival 24 explores a fusion of musical genres, featuring Belgian artists like Nicolas Fiszman and the queen of Afro bass fusion Manou Gallo. There’s also a free jam session, if you want to show off your skills. Begins today at 8.pm.
CAPITAL OF CULTURE: MolenFest has it all: circus acts, theater, movies, you name it. Starting today you can dance through Molenbeek’s parks and squares and support the city in its endeavor to become Europe’s Cultural Capital in 2030. 
BIRTHDAYS: MEP Adam Bielan; former MEPs Bogusław Liberadzki, Francisco Guerreiro, Mark Demesmaeker (now a municipal councilor for Halle) and Lidia Joanna Geringer de Oedenberg; German politician Sigmar Gabriel; European Lotteries Association’s Arjan van ‘t Veer; International Currency Association’s Jutta Buyse; Former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
THANKS TO: Stuart Lau, Sarah Wheaton, Koen Verhelst, Barbara Moens, Elisa Braun, Paula Andrés, Max Griera, Nektaria Stamouli; Playbook reporter Šejla Ahmatović and producer Dean Southwell.
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