The departure of Martin Selmayr from the position of secretary-general of the European Commission overflows with poetic justice. With the inevitability of a Wagnerian opera (but a quicker endgame), Selmayr had to leave because of the way he arrived.
The procedure by which Selmayr and his boss, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, engineered his transfer from chief of Juncker’s cabinet to head of the entire Commission secretariat was an act of such chicanery and skulduggery that it stains the record of the entire Commission.
Ursula von der Leyen, the nominee to replace Juncker, knows that — and perhaps Selmayr knows it too.
After von der Leyen hinted at his upcoming departure, Selmayr told POLITICO Playbook he is leaving next week after only 17 months in the post. He will have the distinction of being its briefest-ever occupant.
The post of secretary-general is not, in theory, a political position. The appointment is made internally by the college of European commissioners and doesn’t require the approval of the European Council or the European Parliament.
Before becoming secretary-general, Selmayr had served as the head of office for two commissioners — first Viviane Reding (he had previously been her spokesperson), then Juncker.
But in the process of defending the indefensible, Selmayr and his allies politicized the position — and in so doing they sowed the seeds for his departure.
Selmayr and his allies portrayed the job as one that had to be filled by someone who enjoyed the fullest confidence of the president of the Commission — someone much like the head of Juncker’s cabinet, the job that Selmayr had held for the previous three and a bit years.
In pushing that vision of the position forward, Selmayr eroded the distinction established over several decades between the offices of the commissioners — the cabinets — which were filled by personal appointments, and the permanent civil service, in which advancement was governed by competition and grades.
Before becoming secretary-general, Selmayr had served as the head of office for two commissioners — first Viviane Reding (he had previously been her spokesperson), then Juncker. Most of his predecessors as secretary-general had also headed a cabinet, but they had experience working as head or deputy head of a Commission department. Selmayr did not.
The distinguishing feature of Selmayr’s working life thus far has been fierce, unswerving loyalty — to Elmar Brok, to Reding and to Juncker | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
The European ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, in her report on the affair, detailed other ways in which Selmayr was not qualified for the position of secretary-general and how he and Juncker went about circumventing the Commission’s own procedural rules.
The fact that there would be a vacancy for the post of secretary-general — that the incumbent Alexander Italianer wanted to retire — was kept secret from the rest of the college of European commissioners. A vacancy for the post of deputy secretary-general was created (by moving the incumbent aside), so that Selmayr could be appointed to that post and, four minutes later, promoted to secretary-general.
The ombudsman observed that the vacancy for deputy secretary-general had been created by breaching the convention that a director-general should not be of the same nationality as the Commissioner responsible for his or her department. The previous deputy secretary-general, Paraskevi Michou, a Greek national (and Selmayr protegée) was transferred at short notice to be director-general for migration, working with Dimitris Avramopoulos, Greece’s European commissioner.
That was not the only principle sacrificed to promote Selmayr. The Juncker Commission’s flagship personnel policy was to increase the number of women in middle and senior management.
The numbers did improve, but the sincerity of the leadership’s commitment to the policy was put in question by the shenanigans surrounding Selmayr’s (interim) promotion to deputy secretary-general: His deputy Clara Martinez applied for the post, thus satisfying the requirement to have at least one female on the shortlist for every senior post, but then withdrew on the eve of the appointment, leaving him as the sole candidate.
Selmayr leaves behind a Commission that undoubtedly bears his imprint, not least in a cadre of middle and senior managers who admired his effectiveness and shared his vision of the EU.
That Selmayr is, like von der Leyen, a German Christian Democrat, made the prospect of his continuing in office a provocation to those of other parties whose support she sought. But it was the nature of his ascent and his argument that the post is a political one that made his departure inevitable.
Selmayr’s resignation will not, at a stroke, restore the Commission’s personnel policies to full health. Guiding principles have been bent out of shape, particularly those that constrained Selmayr’s freedom to control appointments — notably the principle that senior managers should be rotated every five to seven years.
Juncker and Selmayr have kept Irene Souka in place as director-general for administration for 10 years and counting, because she is a willing and effective ally. Laughably, they have done so while introducing a policy of rotating middle managers.
The distinguishing feature of Selmayr’s working life thus far has been fierce, unswerving loyalty — to Elmar Brok, to Reding and to Juncker. In turn, Selmayr demanded unswerving loyalty from others and promoted those loyal to him and to his vision. Selmayr leaves behind a Commission that undoubtedly bears his imprint, not least in a cadre of middle and senior managers who admired his effectiveness and shared his vision of the EU.
Unhappily, however, his crusading passion blinded him to the value of abiding by procedures and principles. Selmayr had himself appointed as the Commission’s chief bureaucrat — but at heart he is a creative lawyer rather than a bureaucrat. It’s the bureaucrats who are smiling now.
Tim King writes POLITICO‘s Brussels Sketch.
CORRECTION: This article has been amended to correct the name of Greece’s European commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos.