Biography | Kristalina Georgieva — The Berlaymont Portfolio She Took in 2010

On 9 February 2010 the European Parliament approved the second Barroso Commission. Bulgaria's seat went to Kristalina Georgieva, with the portfolio International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response. The vote was 488 in favour, 137 against, and 72 abstentions. The session was in Strasbourg. The office the job attached to is this building: the Berlaymont, 200 rue de la Loi, headquarters of the European Commission. She was not the first Bulgarian name on the list. Rumiana Jeleva withdrew in January after a difficult parliamentary hearing. Prime Minister Boyko Borisov put forward Georgieva, then a World Bank vice president. Jose Manuel Barroso accepted the substitution in January. Her own hearing followed in early February. The Commission took office after the 9 February vote. The Berlaymont is the star-shaped slab over Rond-point Schuman. Commissioners sit here, not in the other Commission buildings scattered across the European Quarter. From 2010 to 2014 she ran one of the largest humanitarian budgets in the world. From 2014 to 2016, still in the Commission, she served as vice president for budget and human resources. The World Bank's 2016 appointment release described that portfolio as a 161 billion euro budget and about 33,000 staff. The building a visitor photographs from the roundabout is the rebuilt Berlaymont, reopened in 2004 after asbestos works. It is the same seat. Photo: KenSwe72, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Friends of Europe, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.