“Whoever does not see that there is a risk is blind.” The phrase is from a senior European official about the blockage in which the renewal of the European Commission currently finds itself. On the one hand, the EPP keeps the election of Teresa Ribera as vice president frozen so that she can first go through Congress to account for the DANA after the doubts about her management spread by the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the key moment of her election and On the other hand, the pressure from the popular Europeans for the socialists to go through the hoop of supporting Giorgia Meloni’s candidate, Raffaele Fitto, also as vice president. The negotiations are currently lying fallow, with no new meetings scheduled this Thursday, and with all parties assuming that the resolution, if it arrives, will do so next week while the community government and the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, raise the pressure so that the conflict does not extend further.
“The European Parliament will vote on the next Commission on November 27,” Metsola said in statements released to the press. That is the scheduled date for the plenary session of the European Parliament to give its approval to the entire community government. Before this step, the European Parliament has to give approval individually to each of the candidates and, for the moment, the evaluation of the remaining seven has been postponed – the six vice-presidents and the Hungarian candidate, who did not pass his exam. .
“We still have time. This House is fully committed to the launch of the new Commission. It is our responsibility and we take it very seriously. Especially when we see what is happening around the world,” adds Metsola in his message, referring, fundamentally, to Donald Trump’s victory in the US, which is one of the issues that most worries the European Commission, where they have been preparing for some time. for change in the White House due to the possible economic and geopolitical consequences that his return may cause.
What they assure in the European Commission is that Von der Leyen is in “permanent contact” with her interlocutors in the European Parliament, that is, the leaders of the EPP, Manfred Weber; S&D, Iratxe García; and Renew, Valérie Hayer, which are the groups that support their majority. After Ribera’s tense hearing on Tuesday in which everything was blown up by the European PP’s maneuver to postpone the decision on the Spanish candidate until next week contrary to what was previously agreed with socialists and liberals, Von der Leyen maintained a meeting on Wednesday with the three spokesmen to try to get the situation back on track; but he didn’t get it. It left without an agreement and what all parties assume is that we will have to wait until next week.
The socialists have stood up to the popular demand that they have to support Fitto’s appointment, which will mean raising the extreme right for the first time to a vice presidency of the European Commission. “The S&D are not going to negotiate a package of six vice-presidents because six vice-presidents are not three political families. We are only going to respect that agreement between the three families and not enter into any other type of negotiation,” socialist sources point out about the conservatives’ intention to force them to support Meloni’s candidate, who is part of the Reformists and Conservatives group ( ECR), which is outside the coalition operating in Europe.
“The Popular Group has to decide what it wants to do. If he has decided to form a coalition with the extreme right, let him explain in Germany that the cordon sanitaire has been passed through the triumphal arch, let him explain it in Poland,” these sources point out: “Let him decide if he wants to be in the alliance pro-European. They have two possible majorities. We are not going to be used from time to time to whiten their faces and then on a day-to-day basis be in another alliance.”
The other conflict has to do with Ribera’s nomination, to which the EPP has put obstacles in the way. While Feijóo demands the nomination of another Spanish candidate, the European group has made it a condition to support her that she commit to resigning if she is prosecuted for the management of DANA. For the socialists, at this point, any conditionality for their candidates is unacceptable taking into account that last week they approved 14 candidates for EPP commissioners “for responsibility”, despite the fact that, as they acknowledge, some did not demonstrate the suitability for the position.
For now, the evaluation will have to wait until next week at least. One of the scenarios is that more written explanations are required from the candidates or that they undergo a new evaluation and, therefore, the margin for electing the new Commission on the scheduled date of November 27 is complicated. Another scenario is that everything is resolved and moved forward in a timely manner so that the Von der Leyen cabinet is in place on December 1. And the third is that everything blows up and the EU enters unexplored territory.
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