MEPs prepare to hear 27 commissioners-designate
Political dynamics make rejections unlikely.
The European Parliament will begin a series of 27 confirmation hearings of the nominated European commissioners on Monday (29 September). The hearings will take place over six days in Brussels.
The MEPs will start their questioning with Karmenu Vella from Malta, who has been assigned the portfolio of environment and fisheries, and Cecilia Malmström from Sweden, who is up for the role of commissioner for trade. Those hearings will take place in two separate rooms at the Parliament at 2.30pm.
The seven designated vice-presidents will be the last to be questioned, on 6 and 7 October (with the exception of Kristalina Georgieva who will have her hearing on 2 October).
Each hearing is expected to last for three hours, followed by an hour of debate among the MEPs. Each committee will then have 24 hours to decide whether to recommend approving or rejecting the nominee. The full Parliament will vote in Strasbourg on 21 October on whether to confirm or reject the college of commissioners. Nominees cannot be rejected individually, but the Parliament has the power to reject the college as a whole.
Vicky Ford, a British Conservative MEP who chairs the internal market committee, said this week that she expects the committee deliberations to take longer than 24 hours. One issue that has not been resolved, she said, is whether MEPs will be able to ask follow-up questions.
Nominees expected to face difficult hearings include Vella, Slovenia’s Alenka Bratušek, Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete, Britain’s Jonathan Hill, and Hungary’s Tibor Navracsics.
The Parliament has rejected commissioner nominees in the past. In 2004, the civil rights committee voted against the nomination of Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione as commissioner for justice, freedom and security because of his conservative views on women’s rights and gay rights. José Manuel Barroso had to withdraw his proposed college line-up and replaced Buttiglione with Franco Frattini. Ingrida Udre, the Latvian nominee, was also replaced, by Andris Piebalgs.
In 2009, the Bulgarian nominee, Rumiana Jeleva, was forced to withdraw after MEPs questioned her suitability as a commissioner and her financial interests.
Some MEPs believe that the institution must claim another scalp this time around. But the political dynamics in this term make that unlikely. The two largest groups in the Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), have joined together in a ‘grand coalition’ that, with the additional participation of the liberal ALDE group, gives them a majority in the Parliament.
MEPs from the centre-left and centre-right will be hesitant to vote against the other group’s nominees for fear of upsetting this delicate balance. The Liberals, who have five commissioner nominees, will also be wary of rocking the boat.
Ford said this week that her European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) does not believe it is the role of MEPs to reject nominees. This would leave only the Greens, the far-left GUE/NGL and the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy groups to vote against nominees.
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