In race for top EU, NATO jobs, Eastern Europe asks: ‘Are we equals or not?’

BRUSSELS — Two decades after joining the European Union and NATO, Eastern European countries fear they’ll once again be passed as the top jobs of both institutions are reshuffled later this year.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s likely appointment as the new head of NATO this summer may have received the endorsement of Washington, London, Paris and Berlin. Among many of the alliance’s newer members, however, in particular those bordering Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, the welcome was far less warm.

“What moral credibility does this guy have?” said former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, pointing to the Netherland’s failure to meet its NATO commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense during Rutte’s 13 years as prime minister.

Other contenders for the position included Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, whose government notified NATO of his potential candidacy in February, and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who has not submitted a bid but expressed interest last year.

“If we think about a geographical balance, it’s going to be the fourth [NATO] Secretary-General from the Netherlands,” Kallas told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast last week. “And then there is a question [of] whether there are first-rank and second-rank countries in NATO.”

“Are we equals or are we not equals? So these questions still remain,” she added.

Top job reshuffle

Eastern European countries have held few of the EU and NATO’s top jobs since the bulk of them joined the two institutions in 2004, some 15 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Poland is the only country from the region to have been awarded one of the bloc’s senior positions. Former (and now current) Prime Minister Donald Tusk served one term as European Council president, and Jerzy Buzek, another former Polish prime minister, headed the European Parliament for three years, roughly a half term.

Currently, the most senior Eastern European in the EU is Valdis Dombrovskis, a Latvian who was put in charge of the powerful trade portfolio after his predecessor Phil Hogan, an Irish politician, resigned following a scandal. Romania’s Mircea Geoană is NATO’s deputy secretary-general.

“Since the [2004] enlargement, there are 110 million people living in Central and Eastern Europe,” said Ilves. “There are five big positions in the EU and NATO, and they rotate every five years, so that’s 25 jobs in total. During that time, 20 percent of the EU gets 7 percent of the jobs.”

In addition to the NATO appointment, expected to take place by the leaders’ summit in Washington this summer, the EU’s top positions will be redistributed this year following June’s European Parliament election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, is expected to receive another term. But the race for the other posts — European Council President, European Parliament President and the EU’s top diplomat, the high representative in charge of foreign policy — remain open.

Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has been floated as a possible Defense Commissioner, a new position von der Leyen has said she’d create during a second term. Kallas and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis are also both seen as Baltic prospects for EU postings.

Russia hawks

In Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, senior officials believe that the big powers in Western Europe still hold an unfair bias against them, in particular given their tough positions toward Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The view in the region of Russia as an existential threat is often interpreted by their Western counterparts as hawkishness.

“We [people in Latvia] feel that we were not consulted enough,” former Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said, referring to the selection process for the NATO top job. “They [Western countries] had reasons behind to think that Baltic countries should not at this moment be proposing a candidate.”

Frans Timmermans, a former top Dutch official at the European Commission, epitomized Western Europeans’ resistance to a Baltic head of NATO, saying last year that “she [Kallas] is also prime minister of a country that is on the border with Russia.”

Kallas’ next best hope for a top job is to succeed Spain’s Josep Borrell as high representative for foreign affairs. Indeed, the possibility has been the talk of the town for months, with senior European officials expecting French President Emmanuel Macron to back her for a senior post.

Not everyone, however, is convinced she has a chance.

An EU official, granted anonymity to speak freely, said that the idea of Kallas serving as the EU’s top diplomat “remains sensitive” in some EU capitals.

“I don’t see France and Germany agreeing to that, because of the same reasons she was not an option for the NATO job,” the official said. “Are we really putting someone who likes to eat Russians for breakfast in this position?”