And it’s not just a matter of getting EU leaders singing from the same song sheet. Costa’s team has played a major role in coordinating geopolitical efforts, such as mediating between Ukraine and Hungary to repair the Druzhba oil pipeline and unlock a much-needed €90 billion loan being blocked by Budapest, officials said. The move, one of the most difficult handled by the Council in recent years, ultimately saw the funds released.
Playing politics
For now, the strategy seems to be working. Costa faces having to renew his mandate from member countries at the start of next year. That could have put him in a vulnerable position, given his center-left political family, the S&D, has just three leaders around the Council table.
The largest group, the European People’s Party, by contrast, has 12 leaders and its chief, German MEP Manfred Weber, had floated the idea that Costa could be replaced by one of its own candidates as part of a potential shakeup. However, seven diplomats and two officials from countries spanning the political divide told POLITICO that his re-appointment is seen as a formality as a result of support from national capitals, a vote of confidence in Lourtie and Oppenheimer as well.
“We are quite happy,” said one envoy of the way the Council is operating. “He will make it,” said a second, praising Lourtie’s efforts to pre-agree European Council conclusions and make leaders’ summits a single-day affair.
But the biggest challenges could await Costa’s team in his second term. While the EU’s most high-profile blocker of decisions, Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has left the political stage, a surge of populists still threatens to narrow the path to achieving consensus that Lourtie and Seibert depend on.
Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Czechia’s Andrej Babiš and Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev now make up the reinforced ranks of the Council’s awkward squad, variously digging in their heels on issues from green policy to support for Ukraine. And a 2027 French presidential election could hand the reins of the EU’s second-largest economy to the far-right, with profound consequences for the €1.8 trillion long-term budget Brussels needs to find agreement on before the end of next year.
And, as the response to his Kremlin call revealed, the effort Lourtie will have to expend to keep Brussels’ agenda on track, and countries on side, will only increase — along with what’s at stake if he can’t.