Jean-Claude Juncker, the president-elect of the European Commission, has revealed that he does not expect to announce his plans for organising the next Commission and the distribution of portfolios among those nominated as commissioners until the middle of next week.

Today he has embarked on interviewing those nominated to be commissioners, to assess their suitability and independence. Among the first to meet him will be Frans Timmermans, the foreign minister of the Netherlands, who is in Brussels today (2 September).

Dutch media have been briefed that Timmermans is meeting Juncker to discuss what portfolio he would be given if he were to be a European commissioner. Timmermans was hoping to become the European Union’s foreign policy chief, but on Saturday that post was allocated to Federica Mogherini, Italy’s foreign minister .

There has been speculation that Juncker may ask Timmermans to accept the portfolio of administrative affairs and inter-institutional relations.

Timmermans has in the past argued for reform of the EU’s institutions and his government has argued that the EU should be less expansionary in its legislative ambition, and should leave more tasks to national administrations. “The EU should do more and perform better with less money and with fewer people,” Timmermans said in a letter to the Dutch parliament in February 2013, in response to a parliamentary question from a Freedom Party MP. Juncker could therefore plausibly charge Timmermans with the task of leading reform – an issue that is likely to grow in importance because of British demands for change as a condition of continuing membership.

In addition, Timmermans is from the centre-left, which theoretically would make him more palatable to the EU’s staff unions than someone from the centre-right. Responsibility for inter-institutional relations traditionally carries with it the status of a Commission vice-presidency, which is deemed appropriate to the task of negotiating with the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

If the Dutch government is not satisfied with the portfolio offered to Timmermans, it may yet nominate Lilianne Ploumen, the Dutch minister of trade and development co-operation. That would help Juncker in his quest to reach a threshold of nine women in his Commission line-up.  So far he has six women nominated: Federica Mogherini from Italy, Kristalina Georgieva from Bulgaria, Cecilia Malmström from Sweden, Margrethe Vestager from Denmark, Věra Jourová from the Czech Republic, and Alenka Bratušek from Slovenia.

In Romania, Prime Minister Victor Ponta has suggested that he might replace Dacian Cioloş, who has been nominated for a second term as the country’s commissioner, if he is not given the agriculture portfolio that he held in 2009-14. If Juncker wants to assign that portfolio elsewhere and Ponta decides to follow through with his threat, then he might put forward a woman candidate in the hope of securing a better portfolio. The leading contenders to replace Cioloş are Corina Creţu, a centre-left MEP and a vice-president of the European Parliament, and Rovana Plumb, a former MEP, now minister for labour and the family.

French and German media are reporting that the German government is ready to accept that Pierre Moscovici, France’s nominee to be European commissioner, could be given an economic affairs portfolio, even though France is pressing for relaxation of the EU’s fiscal rules. Juncker may seek to counter Germany’s concerns by grouping the portfolio in a cluster of European commissioners dealing with economic matters that would also include Jyrki Katainen, the former prime minister of Finland, now Finland’s European commissioner, who is more fiscally orthodox.

Juncker will spend this week meeting nominees to discuss their suitability for the Commission. He is then supposed to submit the list of commissioners-designate to the Council of Ministers for its formal approval. But that procedural hurdle cannot be cleared until Belgium nominates a candidate – a decision that is pending on negotiations over the formation of a new federal government. Only after the Council has approved the list will Juncker announce his proposed distribution of portfolios and the way he intends to organise the work of the next  Commission. “This is not expected until mid-next week,” his spokeswoman said.

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