Bulgaria remains a pawn in Ursula von der Leyen's political game

Tuesday, Aug 20, 2024

Ursula von der Leyen seeks EU commissioners; member states submit biased male candidates despite guidelines.

🔗 Read the article on mediapool.bg


[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

While Ursula von der Leyen’s clock is ticking regarding the fight for positions in the new European Commission, Bulgaria lacks a confirmed name for its government minister-president, let alone a nomination for an EU commissioner. The re-elected President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen (Germany), must urgently compile a list of nominated candidates that will be proposed to the Council of the EU for hearing and voting by the Members of the European Parliament in early autumn. To achieve this, Von der Leyen tasked each member state with proposing two candidates by August 30th—one man and one woman—from whom she will choose (a single nomination is permitted only if it is an incumbent commissioner). However, the governments that have submitted nominations so far are not adhering to these recommendations and are predominantly providing male candidates.


🔗 Read the original article

© 2026 Pulse - Europe beyond the beat


PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.