Why the EU president won't fire her rogue commissioner

Orban's man in the Commission falsely tweeted that the EU is suspending aid to Palestinians, sending the Berlaymont into chaos. But the broken commissioner system makes him untouchable.

In any national system, the consequences would be clear. If a minister tweeted out a major controversial policy announcement without authorisation from the prime minister, essentially lying that it was already government policy in order to pressure the government to do it, he would be sacked on the spot. But that’s not how things work here in Brussels.

Yesterday the EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, shocked Brussels by sending out a tweet on X announcing the immediate suspension of all development aid to the Palestinian Territories in response to Hamas’s attack. The funds would be suspended, he said, while a review is conducted to determine if, as Israel has long alleged, these funds meant to build hospitals or pay civil servants end up in the hands of terrorists. It already seemed strange because the Commission had put out no press release for such a shocking and controversial act. The Commission’s communication department seemed to go into panic mode. When a journalist asked a spokesperson if the tweet was true, they said it was. Perhaps because they were afraid to admit that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen didn’t have control over her own college of 27 commissioners, which is something like a cabinet for a national leader.