To the annoyance of MEPs and parliamentary officials, Serafin arrived four hours late. The presentation was riddled with confusion about what the numbers exactly meant and how they’d be calculated, and lawmakers were outraged for not having received the figures beforehand.
“We hope you brought some document with you as well, as this distinguished house has not been informed,” lawmaker Siegfried Mureșan sniped at Serafin, who hails from the same center-right group.
In fact, even von der Leyen’s team of commissioners weren’t aware of the overall figures until a few hours earlier.
Explaining the murky process, one official close to a commissioner said: “She told us how much she would cut from our program but we didn’t know how much she would cut from those of our peers.”
For everyone apart from the small close-knit group that the president confides in, it made working out the exact overall policy incredibly difficult to comprehend.
Ramshackle alliance
In recent months, criticism of von der Leyen and her centralized way of decision-making has increased but, for the first time, simmering internal opposition burst to the surface. Commissioners, mainly those from different political colors, forced her to back down.
Von der Leyen’s big idea had been to merge a plethora of different pots of the budget into plans for each country that would only pay out when governments carry out reforms. In her view, this system would have encouraged recalcitrant countries to step up their game while increasing Brussels’ leverage over capitals.