Violeta Bulc: not your average European Commission candidate

What do we know about the new Slovenian nominee to be European commissioner for transport?

Much has been said about Violeta Bulc’s colourful interests. But when it comes to her politics, she is a blank slate.

She started her first political post only a few weeks ago. She was appointed by Miro Cerar to be part of his new government, which took office in September. She was made a deputy prime minister without portfolio, responsible for development, strategic projects and cohesion. She had joined Cerar’s eponymous party, the Party of Miro Cerar, shortly before Slovenia’s general election in May.

When news of her nomination reached Brussels, many hurried to her website and blog and quickly gleaned that Bulc is not your average European commissioner. Bulc, 50, studied as a shaman and is a trained fire-walker. Her blog explains her interest in positive energy forces, something more common in the bay area of California where she was educated than in the corridors of power in Brussels.

Her unconventional past was the object of much attention on Twitter in the hours following her nomination. But detractors beware – Bulc is a black belt in taekwondo and has taught self-defence in the past.

Bulc’s background is fairly conventional in parts, however. She is an entrepreneur who in 1999 founded her own successful telecoms firm called Telemach. She was born in 1964 in Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia, and studied computer science and informatics at the University of Ljubljana. She then obtained a masters of science in information technology from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California. She worked in Silicon Valley for four years before moving back to Slovenia in 1994, after it became an independent country.

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Five questions MEPs should ask Violeta Bulc

Bulc’s political persuasions are hard to ascertain, as she had not yet had a chance to start work in the Slovenian parliament before being nominated as European commissioner. The Party of Miro Cerar has no European affiliation, although there have been media reports in Slovenia that Cerar is about to join ALDE. His governing coalition is centre-left.

ALDE appears to be quite confident that Bulc is a liberal, with liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt tweeting after the news broke last Friday that she is a “strong liberal candidate”. She does have some connection to Slovenia’s now mostly moribund Liberal parties. She was married to Aleš Bulc, whose father Marko Bulc was a politician in the late 1980s connected with the Slovenian Liberals.

With her background, it might have made more sense to give Bulc the digital agenda portfolio. She has no experience with transport policy, something she freely admitted to transport committee chair Michael Cramer, a German Green, when they met on Wednesday night at the European Parliament. Cramer is sceptical that she has what it takes and considers her hearing on Monday (20 October) to be very important. “She has a lot of homework to do over the weekend,” he said after the meeting.

Bulc is bound to face many of the same questions as Alenka Bratušek, focusing on her experience – or lack of it – and the way in which she was nominated. In nominating Bulc, Miro Cerar used the same parliamentary procedure that Alenka Bratušek used to overrule her own cabinet when she nominated a list of three names including her own. Seven ministers in Cerar’s cabinet voted against Bulc’s nomination, six ministers voted for. But three ministers were absent. Cerar counted these three ministers as having voted yes. When Bratušek did this same thing, Cerar heavily criticised her.

However, MEPs are unlikely to bring this up at Monday’s hearing. Nor are they likely to bring up the shamanism or fire-walking, at least not in a critical way. The deal for her to become transport commissioner and for Maroš Šefčovič to become vice-president for energy union has been painstakingly worked out with the Parliament’s two largest groups, the EPP and S&D, according to Parliament sources. ALDE considers her a liberal, and though they may be upset about her not being given the vice-presidency allocated to Bratušek, they are unlikely to kick up a fuss about it. Green MEPs have indicated they already like her personality and the ECR has not registered any objection.

MEPs are likely to go easy on her on Monday, considering she has been given only four days to learn about a policy area she has no background in. As long as she demonstrates basic competence, and does not fall into her predecessor’s trap of repeating canned answers, she should be okay. Her excellent English skills should help her in this regard.