Schreyer Warns Berlin on Super Commissioner

The Berlin government is pushing to secure a newly created "super Commissioner" post, with exclusive competencies for economic and industry policy, when the new Commission takes office next November. But Schreyer spoke out against her country's plans for the new post in an interview with Financial Times Deutschland. "In the EU Commission we do not have the departmental principle in which individual Commissioners can decide largely on their own on EU initiatives in their policy fields," she said. Within the Commission, we have the principle of collegiality (...) All decisions are taken on a common basis, whether environmental, or on competition, internal market, or industry." German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder wants Germany to have a bigger say over the next EU executive's economic policies by appointing current Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen as economic super commissioner and vice-president of the next Commission. It remains unclear, however, which departments and which policies the new super commissioner post would supervise. (EUobserver.com)