Hadja Lahbib, Belgium’s newest European Commissioner candidate, has certainly made an impression at her first General Affairs Council meeting of the Council of the European Union — but maybe not quite the one she intended.
Lahbib confidently took the floor on September 24 and began reading … the wrong text.
She skipped ahead on the agenda, leaving everyone momentarily puzzled. Her adviser had to step in to save the day.
“I take the floor but, um, on the next point, it seems,” Lahbib admitted, triggering laughter in the room.
The Hungarian representative Bóka János responded: “Thank you for responding to the agenda in a very flexible manner.”
Lahbib was supposed to talk about the rule of law in Europe, a hot-button issue in Brussels, as Hungary presented the priorities for its term of office as president of the Council of the EU .
Lahbib’s appointment as a candidate for the EC was met with scepticism.
Following negotiations, Belgian Liberal Party president Georges-Louis Bouchez managed to nominate his foreign minister Lahbib for the EC, sparking criticism from sceptics on all fronts doubting her competency for such a role.
If appointed to the EC, Habib will take the Crisis Management and Humanitarian Aid and Equality portfolios, which has been seen as a significant step down for Belgium, which previously held the justice portfolio with former commissioner Didier Reynders.
Belgian MEPs are not too happy with Lahbib’s assigned portfolio, calling it “weak”.
“Belgium’s political procrastination has [potentially] left Lahbib with a pretty weak portfolio. After our strong presidency, this is a bit of a letdown,” commented Green MEP Sara Matthieu.
Discussions surrounding Lahbib’s skill stems from the fact that she has not been a politician for very long.
Just two years ago she was a journalist with Belgian TV. In 2022, she was thrust into the role of foreign minister by Bouchez of the Mouvement Reformateur (MR), replacing now-MEP Sophie Wilmès.
As a journalist, working on culture, she famously went to a Russian-sponsored art event in Crimea in 2021, already under illegal occupation.
Bouchez’s move to nominate Lahbib for the EC appears to many to be a political ploy designed to curtail political discontent of the MR.
La Libre, a Belgian daily newspaper, has reported that Belgian diplomats were becoming more dissatisfied with her performance as foreign affairs minister and her lack of knowledge of the intricacies of diplomacy.
When asked to justify his choice, Bouchez pointed to what he said was MR’s dedication to feminism.
“There was a desire for feminisation, a desire for modernisation, both at the level of European structures and at the level of the MR,” he said.
