The Greek government announced on Thursday that Margaritis Schinas will be Greece’s new European Commissioner during Ursula von der Leyen’s Presidency of the European Commission.
The announcement put an end to speculation over who would replace Dimitris Avramopoulos, the current EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship under the Juncker Presidency.
Schinas, who is currently serving as the chief spokesperson of the European Commission, will assume this prominent position along with the rest of the new European Commissioners later this year.
The European Commission is the EU’s executive branch; each member state has the right to appoint one commissioner, who is considered the equivalent of ministers in national governments.
Each commissioner is first nominated by their member state in consultation with the Commission President, in this case, European Commission’s President-elect Ursula von der Leyen.
The President’s team is then subject to hearings in the European Parliament, which questions the candidates and then hands down their decision by voting on their suitability as a whole.
German Defense Minister von der Layen was confirmed as the successor to Jean-Claude Juncker by a majority of only nine votes earlier this week.
She needed 374 votes to win Tuesday’s confirmation, and in the end won with 383 — well short of the 420 votes garnered by her predecessor.
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