‘Monster’ at the Berlaymont

For a true believer in democracy, Martin Selmayr runs the European Commission not as some curator of debate but like the merciless hand of a king, who will stop at nothing to protect his vision of the realm: Europe, united and free.

Make that an extremely heavy hand. Or maybe an armored bulldozer.

As chief of staff to President Jean-Claude Juncker, Selmayr has spent the last two years astonishing and infuriating the EU establishment. He is a gatekeeper, restricting access to his boss even for high-level commissioners. He is an enforcer, imposing Juncker’s imprint (or his own) on virtually all initiatives, and plowing through those who disagree.

His peers in power say they cannot trust him. Subordinates say they fear him. Already, one Commission vice president and several high-level aides have quit, decrying his authoritarian control of the Commission, which he has remade unapologetically, in Juncker’s name, as a top-down institution. “He is the president,” Selmayr said in an interview in his 13th floor office at the Berlaymont. “He sets the political guidelines and the others have to follow.”

And they do. Selmayr gives them no choice.

His goal, as chief of staff of what Juncker has called a “last-chance Commission,” is nothing less than saving the Continent, and he claims to be doing just that, having rescued Greece from financial collapse, navigated the worst of the migrant crisis, and mostly held ranks in the face of Brexit and an onslaught of populist forces.

Critics say he is presiding over the demise of the Europe he seeks to protect, with Brexit the most glaring failure, Greece’s future still uncertain, the migrant crisis still unsolved, and perhaps the worst fallout of the EU’s recent failings still to come as the Netherlands, France and Germany vote next year.

The Juncker Commission has struggled to deliver even modest results, such as the recent trade agreement with Canada, which was nearly derailed, or a plan to end roaming charges that had to be scrapped and redone. Other promises that Juncker made before his election in 2014, like a trade pact with the U.S., seem to have little chance of ever being fulfilled. “One way to approach the Commission is to have a strong presidency,” said one senior EU official. “The problem starts when such a strong presidency delivers bad decisions.”

The senior official, who like most people in Brussels requested anonymity to speak about Juncker’s chief of staff out of fear of political reprisal, said Selmayr might be forgiven for his heavy-handed management if he were actually getting solid results. “It’s only natural that once you are in power, you have enemies,” this official said. “The problem with Martin is he has no friends. That means maybe he took it too far.”

Selmayr is the first to admit that he is not out to make friends. For the 45-year-old German lawyer, the only opinion that matters is that of his boss. “The president has a lot of power,” he told POLITICO. “My power is non-existent. It derives only from what the president instructs me.”

‘Poisonous’ and polarizing

Selmayr’s outsized — often polarizing — role running the Berlaymont is usually hidden behind the scenes, a subject of whispering in the corridors, off-the-record phone calls and private commiseration among colleagues.

But for a brief moment late last month it was thrust into public view when Vice President Kristalina Georgieva announced her resignation, a move she said was partly based on frustration with Selmayr’s top-down management, and with Juncker taking unilateral decisions that left even top-level commissioners in the dark.

“The combination with Martin Selmayr is just poisonous,” Georgieva told POLITICO’s Playbook in early September. As an example, Georgieva, who runs the Commission’s budget and staffing, said she and First Vice President Frans Timmermans felt blindsided by Juncker’s choice of Michel Barnier as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator. “Frans Timmermans and I looked at each other and said the same thing: ‘I can’t take it anymore,’” she said.

Timmermans, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed for this article.

On a more substantive level, Georgieva said she also disagreed with repeated criticism that Juncker and Selmayr have leveled at European capitals. “We’ve been eroding the unity of the Union by finger-pointing at member states,” she said, adding that, “We need to be par excellence on unity and we are not.”

Selmayr expressed bewilderment at those assertions and denied that there was any bad feeling with Georgieva, who shortly before her resignation made a failed bid to become secretary-general of the United Nations, and is now returning to the World Bank, where she has spent most of her career.

Selmayr said he and Juncker had only good relations with Georgieva and that he did not believe she was leaving out of any dissatisfaction. He said, however, that she may have felt out of place in a more political Commission stocked heavily with former prime ministers, foreign ministers and other ex-government leaders.

“Mrs. Georgieva is one exception to that,” Selmayr said. “I think Mrs. Georgieva had a more technocratic profile.” Still, he said, there was strong loyalty in each direction and he did not think she would be leaving with any ill will. “I think Mrs. Georgieva knows very well what the president and I personally did for her,” he said. “I can only say from my side the president and I have very close and good relations with Mrs. Georgieva. We always supported her. She always supported us.”

Selmayr acknowledged that Juncker did not always consult his colleagues as much as some might like, but added that some commissioners were to blame for having leaked confidential information, diminishing the president’s ability to confer. “He has made the experience that this house is very prone to leaks,” Selmayr said. “He sometimes has lunches with the vice presidents, and unfortunately sometimes five minutes after the lunches with vice presidents very confidential personnel matters are out there in the media. So that limits sometimes the possibility of consultation.”

In search of a president

Selmayr was born in Bonn, and spent his formative years in Karlsruhe in southwest Germany where his father, also a lawyer by training and now retired, was a respected university chancellor.

Part of his commitment to the European project, he has said, stemmed from a trip he took as a teenager with his maternal grandfather, Heinz Gaedecke, to the battlefields and military cemeteries of Verdun. His grandfather told him that his generation had an obligation to prevent any repeat of the mistakes of the past.

“To protect the peace, to protect prosperity, to protect fundamental freedoms — that, I think, is a reason to get up every morning,” Selmayr said at his office, where behind his desk hangs a framed, annotated copy of the Schuman Declaration, the 1950 proposal to combine German and French steel and coal production under a single authority, a first crucial step toward the modern EU.

If Selmayr is a true believer, he is also an over-achiever, having rocketed from the middling position of spokesman for the commissioner of information, society and media to chief of staff to the president in just 10 years — a remarkable rise through the Eurocracy that for others might have taken decades.

Selmayr’s first job after university was with the European Central Bank. He considers himself an academic as much as a public official, listing his title on his resumé as “Professor Dr. Martin Selmayr.” But more crucial was an internship during university with Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate, where he first met Elmar Brok, the influential German member of the European Parliament and heavyweight in the European People’s Party.

Selmayr said he vividly recalls his first encounter with Brok, who at the time was at the center of negotiations over the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, which among other things created a common European security and foreign policy. Selmayr was sent to deliver documents to Brok, who met him in a courtyard outside the Commission’s headquarters at the Berlaymont building. “I was very impressed that I actually had the opportunity to meet somebody who was negotiating a new treaty for the European Union,” Selmayr said.

Brok became a mentor and something of a political godfather to Selmayr, later recommending that he be hired as head of Bertelsmann’s office in Brussels and ultimately pairing him with Juncker.

Most presidents choose their chief of staff. In many ways, Selmayr was a chief of staff in search of a president. Selmayr rose through the ranks as an aide and later chief of cabinet to Viviane Reding, a longtime commissioner and, like Juncker, a Luxembourger. Selmayr prepared her for a potential bid for the Commission presidency and positioned her as a leading proponent of a “United States of Europe.”

In the end, Reding did not run for the top job, in part because leaders of the European People’s Party, including Brok, saw Juncker, a prime minister of Luxembourg for 19 years who stepped down in 2013 as a better prospect.

Selmayr, in the interview, said that after Reding decided in December 2013 not to seek the presidency, he began to plan his own future outside the Commission, securing a post at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He said he was surprised when colleagues, including Brok, recommended him to run Juncker’s campaign. “My life was planned totally differently,” he said. “I had planned to go for a month to take a break, go with my wife to Spain and just have a holiday.”

Brok knew that Selmayr was a passionate believer in the effort to create a more political presidency — a goal that would be furthered by a sort-of election in which a lead candidate or Spitzenkandidaten from each party campaigned during elections for the European Parliament. The winner would be whoever’s party got the largest number of votes.

In the first such contest, Juncker faced off against his longtime friend, Martin Schulz, the candidate of the Social Democrats, in a campaign steered by Selmayr who developed a five-point platform and organized campaign events across Europe. “He was the right person to run the campaign,” Brok said. “He is a good administrator, he was a good spokesman, and he’s a good academic and he has good political judgement.”

The result, however, was not binding; the European Council must still formally nominate a president to be approved by the Parliament. In Juncker’s case, German Chancellor Angela Merkel initially resisted backing him for the presidency. Selmayr, by presenting Juncker to the German public as the Spitzenkandidat and claiming democratic legitimacy after the European election, outmaneuvered Berlin. By the time Merkel realized what had happened, it was too late. Berlin had little choice but to endorse Juncker.

According to others, Brok was more pragmatic still. “Do not worry, he will take care of everything,” an EPP official quoted Brok as telling Juncker at the time. “To control the Commission, you need a brutal one, and he is one.”

A frightening charmer

Selmayr might have a forceful personality, but he does not strike an intimidating pose. With boyish cheeks and an easy smile, he has the slender fingers of a pianist; his handshake is more a curtsy than a bow.

Fans of Selmayr describe him as a razor-smart lawyer, a masterly manager, and a fanatical believer in participatory democracy and the European Union who can quote by heart from the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Lisbon. Critics say he is a manipulative bully who prefers diktats to debate and has turned the Commission into a Brussels spin-off of “House of Cards,” in which intrigue swirls around trade talks, fiscal policy and even migration statistics.

He can be tough, sometimes bullying commissioners — in one case, according to a witness, threatening the Commission vice president for energy, Maroš Šefčovič, that he could be reassigned to the portfolio that includes culture and sport. (Selmayr flatly denied threatening any commissioner, and insisted he does not have the authority to fire anyone from the civil service.)

Selmayr can be charming, at times cajoling diplomats. And he can also be frightening, browbeating unprepared staff — all in the name of Juncker who has granted him extraordinary license to run the Commission and its 35,000 employees on a daily basis.

And yet, even some of Selmayr’s critics admit his effectiveness. “Many people would like to change things and they cannot do it,” said one former official who resigned in frustration. “Then comes Martin Selmayr and starts to change things. I think people are watching with awe.”

By all indications, Selmayr’s model is Pascal Lamy, the legendary chief of staff to Commission President Jacques Delors from 1985 to 1994, who earned the nickname, “the Beast of the Berlaymont.”

In his book, “Delors: Inside the House that Jacques Built,” Charles Grant wrote: “Lamy exercised more power than most of the commissioners, and he terrified many officials,” adding: “Lamy’s role was to run the administration, which has never interested Delors and to be ruthless when necessary.”

Even before the Juncker Commission took office in summer 2014, Selmayr stirred controversy by heavily editing the testimony that Cecilia Malmström, who had been nominated for trade commissioner, gave to the European Parliament during her confirmation hearing. The “track changes” in the Word document were made public, revealing that Selmayr had reversed Malmström’s position on a controversial matter related to settling trade disputes, apparently without her knowledge or consent.

Selmayr said that he was acting on Juncker’s behalf to make sure the testimony matched his publicly declared goals for the Commission. “It is not a president who types into the computer things,” he said. “I am typing things into the computer for him.” He added, “You always do track changes — to send back a document to say, ‘We like your document, here there are a couple of issues that are not in line with the political orientation of the president.’”

Whatever the reason, officials said the episode caused undue embarrassment to Malmström and to the new Commission. “If her draft contained something that went against standing policy, then they should have solved it internally,” said one EU official with knowledge of the incident.

Selmayr’s ruthlessness is just one reason why many people in the European institutions declined to speak about him on the record. Many refused to speak about him at all.

Those who did speak for the record were typically complimentary, with a number saying that Selmayr has brought unprecedented efficiency to a Commission long known for bureaucratic dithering. “When I need a decision to be taken on any file, I talk to Martin,” said Tomáš Prouza, the Czech state secretary for European affairs. “We never waste time. He makes good decisions, and it’s always a good experience.”

Prouza added: “It’s in my interest to deal with someone who controls things.”

One chief of staff at the commission, who requested anonymity, said that many commissioners were frustrated by Selmayr acting as roadblock to Juncker.  Some never meet with him one on one.  “It is very difficult for commissioners to accept,” the chief of staff said. “There is no access to the president.”

Others said that Selmayr also controls access to documents as well as communication. In some cases, cabinet chiefs are not permitted to take copies of documents, which are marked so that leaks can be traced. Emailing Juncker directly is also typically prohibited, they said, with Selmayr demanding to clear all messages.

The chief of staff said many high-level Commission officials feared Selmayr, and another Commission colleague said Selmayr came across as unnecessarily harsh and seemed to relish the intimidation. “I think people would follow him more if his management style were different,” the chief of staff said. “The lack of delivering is not because of him not having the right vision. We are like an army. If A doesn’t trust B and B doesn’t trust C, there is no collective movement.”

Another senior official said that even Juncker, perhaps jokingly, occasionally refers to Selmayr as “the monster.”

Preventing Grexit and fighting populism

If Selmayr gets his way, and he is a man who often does, Juncker will go down in history as the man who saved Europe from a storm of crises. More immediately, though, his aims are to show the virtues of having a more political Commission and to ensure that Juncker’s campaign promises are fulfilled by the end of his first term in 2019.

By Selmayr’s account, criticism of the Juncker Commission is unjustified. For one, he said, Juncker’s position on trade issues had proved to be the politically winning view in recent talks with Canada. More broadly, he added, Juncker has already brought the Continent back from the brink several times.

“We kept Greece in the Euro,” he said. “We managed to convince [Greek Prime Minister Alexis] Tsipras to engage in a new reform program. I don’t think anybody thought that this was possible when Prime Minister Tsipras was elected.” In marathon negotiations over pizza held in Juncker’s office, Selmayr said his boss persisted “even when the negotiations had been broken down six times, when the Germans and the IMF didn’t want to talk to the Greeks anymore.”

Selmayr also credited Juncker with steering a divided bloc through the worst of the refugee crisis and sealing the Paris accord on climate change, all while fending off surges of populism.

And yet, he acknowledged, a successful Commission must do more than just contain crises. His ambition, he said, is to secure enough victories by the end of Juncker’s first five-year term to reaffirm the president’s view that the Commission functions better as a top-down institution, and facilitate the creation of a stronger political union in Europe.

“The commission should not be an unelected bureaucracy,” he said. “The European Union needs to be at the level of democratic standards as we expect from our member states.” He said the achievements were already piling up. “All the initiatives that were promised are on the table,” he said. “We have about one-third of these initiatives now through. And the rest you will judge that at the end of the mandate.”

In his fight to save the Continent, Selmayr said he was ready to face further criticism. “The European Commission has been created to be the scapegoat,” he said, citing Walter Hallstein, one of the EU’s founding fathers.  “You have to hit at somebody. That is part of the job description.”

Ryan Heath, Maïa de La Baume, Giulia Paravicini and Florian Eder contributed to this article.