Ansip and Oettinger — the odd couple

When the bright and powerful gather this week at Commissioner Günther Oettinger’s “mini-Davos” for two days of skiing, schmoozing and far-reaching discussions about the future of our digital lives, one person will be noticeable because of his absence: Digital Vice President Andrus Ansip.

The yearly confab in the idyllic Austrian ski town of Lech will include lobbyists, EU heavyweights and industry representatives. With the conference in its sixth year, invitations are more coveted than ever.

Yet Ansip, the most senior EU official in charge of digital, is not going. When asked, his cabinet said he was too busy and that he would be spending time in Estonia instead.

Had Ansip decided to go to Lech, it might have raised awkward questions about who is in charge of tech. Oettinger, who no longer handles the digital portfolio, has invited policy leaders from Google, Uber and Deutsche Telekom, among others.

But Ansip is letting Oettinger do what Oettinger does best — mingle with industry and get things done — in what may be part of a long game. By letting Oettinger shine and keeping him close to the digital file, Ansip hopes to be prioritized in the budget, Commission officials said.

While Oettinger has specific interests — connected cars, publishers’ rights and high-speed networks chief among them — if you manage to engage him, he can be a powerful and effective ally, industry insiders and Commission officials say.

“He is still quite helpful for [Ansip’s team],” one Commission official said.

It’s a strategy the more soft-spoken Estonian has refined over the years of working with the brasher German.

It’s complicated

The relationship between Oettinger and Ansip — which goes back almost a decade — is complicated.

They first met when Oettinger was minister president of Baden-Württemberg, a German region of more than 10.5 million people, and Ansip was prime minister of Estonia, a country about a tenth of the size.

Ansip eventually left Tallinn for Brussels, taking a position as an MEP before rising to the post of vice president in the European Commission in 2014, overseeing all things digital — telecommunications, consumer rights online, copyright and data protection.

Oettinger, meanwhile, had left Stuttgart for Brussels in 2010 to take charge of the energy portfolio. The next four years weren’t smooth sailing for the new commissioner, who knew German politics well but found himself a novice when it came to Brussels dealmaking.

When he got the digital portfolio, reporting to Ansip, in 2014 — which some saw as a slight of the ambitious German politician — he transformed it into a power base, leveraging his longstanding relationship with German industry to secure funding for European projects such as costly infrastructure for 5G connectivity.

“They are two persons keen to develop [digital] opportunities for Europe,” said Gianpiero Lotito, CEO and founder of Italian search engine FacilityLive. “They developed from two different points of views: one from the point of view of large industry and the other from the new and small industries.

“But we need both approaches in Europe.” 

Schmoozer and technocrat

Oettinger knows his way around a cocktail party — and a political deal. After close to a decade in Brussels, he’s become a favorite of Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and won the gratitude of some of Europe’s telecom giants and big media publishers.

After a cybersecurity meeting in Strasbourg last summer that both Ansip and Oettinger attended, about two dozen industry lobbyists surrounded Oettinger to bend his ear but left Ansip alone at his table, according to someone there.

But while Oettinger understands business and politics, he was known as a Luddite who, when he first took over the portfolio, didn’t seem to quite get digital technology. He famously compared net neutrality activists to the Taliban and raved about connected cars but didn’t appear to understand how they worked. At home, he didn’t have Wi-Fi installed, preferring, as he put it, “a nice bottle of Bordeaux” to a broadband connection.

Ansip, conversely, impressed Brussels technocrats with his knowledge of tech. Here was someone who understood the complicated ins and outs of data flows, cybersecurity and e-government. An engineer by training who came from a technologically forward country, he seemed like the right fit for the portfolio.

“I’m very positive about Ansip,” Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, an MEP from the European People’s Party (EPP), said earlier this year. “Within the EPP, we have an excellent cooperation with Ansip on many different issues,” added Bildt, the vice chair of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, which deals with a lot of digital issues. “We have a lot of respect for his approach. We have so much on our table, we really need to move forward.”

Julia Reda, an MEP from the Greens, echoed Bildt’s praise of Ansip. “He understands the issues a lot better than Oettinger,” she said, adding that, when it came to readiness to take over the digital portfolio, “we gave Ansip a 7 out of 10 and Oettinger a 3.”

Though well-liked by policymakers, Ansip found it harder to deliver on his own ambitious proposals such as data flows and getting rid of geoblocking, which prevents the consumption of certain digital content based on where you live. Observers say that in some instances, Ansip failed to convince Juncker.

“Ansip and the cabinet might be nice and collegial to work with, but someone needs to burst their bubble that things are going well,” one industry lobbyist said.

Alone at the table

When Oettinger was given the portfolio of the EU budget and human resources earlier this year — a promotion that surprised many after a series of gaffes — it meant relinquishing the digital file that he had previously held.

But Oettinger doesn’t seem quite able to let go.

“It’s his baby,” said Christoph Keese, an executive vice president at Axel Springer SE, who lobbied Oettinger to overhaul EU copyright rules.

Axel Springer is co-owner of POLITICO’s European edition.

Oettinger’s continued interest in the digital portfolio is reflected in the guest list for his mini-Davos this week: His conference now focuses on the EU budget and political challenges in Europe, but the program also heavily features discussions about tech and the digital economy.

The commissioner also found time to fly to Barcelona in late February for the Mobile World Congress, which brought together telecoms companies and car manufacturers for the biggest telecoms and mobile conference in the world. In March, he was an honored guest at an executive dinner thrown by EU’s biggest tech lobby DigitalEurope. Most revealingly, perhaps: He still sits in on internal Commission meetings on digital, including a recent discussion on regulating digital platforms.

As one Commission official put it: “There’s a difference between his private agenda and his official role.”

While all commissioners are free to see who they want and Oettinger isn’t crashing the meetings — in fact, Ansip has encouraged him to attend, according to Commission officials — the German is making liberal use of the privilege to stay involved.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Lobbyists still flock to him to get things done. In Barcelona, where Ansip and Oettinger met with industry to discuss the issue of connected cars, one lobbyist present said that it seemed as if Oettinger still ran the show.

“Clearly, Oettinger had been working on this for longer,” the lobbyist said, adding that Oettinger put connected cars on the map. “Oettinger was good at public communication.”

Meanwhile, Ansip, his former boss, who now fully owns the file, hasn’t yet fully taken charge, lawmakers and industry lobbyists say.

In his own words, Ansip is simply being pragmatic.

“I’m ready to make the most ambitious proposals in the world, but what’s the point if you know there is no connection with reality?” Ansip told POLITICO. “Slice-by-slice, step-by-step — that’s much more fruitful.”

Officials and industry observers, however, say the danger with an incremental approach is that it fails to deliver the promised digital revolution in Europe. The Commission’s strategy, many say, doesn’t do enough to further European competitiveness vis-a-vis Asia and the United States.

Challenge ahead

There are persistent rumors the two men don’t get along — politically and personally. Ansip has repeatedly denied this, saying their relationship is “in good shape.” A spokesperson for the Commission wrote in a statement that Oettinger “continues to play an active role in the Digital Single Market team led by Vice President Ansip” and that “the cooperation between the two remains very good.”

Ansip told POLITICO last year that just because he is in charge, it doesn’t mean “people will have to say ‘yes, as you wish,’” adding about Oettinger: “He’s an intense person, and I like it.”

Still, the two men are clearly temperamentally different.

“Oettinger is certainly a character. Ansip is extremely wooden,” as one a tech lobbyist put it.

Unlike the assertive Oettinger, who charms and cajoles in equal measure, Ansip is more low-key, a technocrat more invested in achieving his long-term goals than in feeding his own ego.

“Andrus is very pragmatic and concrete,” said Siim Sikkut, who was Ansip’s digital adviser when Ansip was Estonia’s prime minister. “He focuses on deliverables … as a prime minister and as a person.”

When it comes to the challenge ahead — how to update and implement the Digital Single Market Strategy, a vast blueprint for the digital economy, including self-driving cars, how we shop online, industry use of robotics and the transfer of data across borders — Ansip will still need Oettinger, now in charge of the budget.

“Now that he controls the purse, he has more power,” one lobbyist said.

With their roles fundamentally changed, Ansip will have to lean on the powerful German to fund future digital projects, especially as Brexit and weak economic growth could cut Europe’s budget significantly, and having Oettinger’s attention — even if it means leaving the stage to him — may be better than not.

Laurens Cerulus contributed reporting.