White smoke. Popular, socialists and liberals have reached an agreement to support all the pending candidates for the new European Commission after a week of crisis triggered by the following of the leader of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, to Alberto Núñez Feijóo to wear down Teresa Ribera and by the refusal of the other two groups that support Ursula von der Leyen to endorse the far-right candidates of Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán. Finally, the crossed vetoes have been lifted and, as expected, the popular Europeans have agreed to support Ribera and socialists and liberals have given in to support Raffaele Fitto and Oliver Varhely. However, the Hungarian is being stripped of some of the powers that Von der Leyen had assigned him, such as reproductive rights or crisis management.
The intention is for the agreement to be formally ratified in the corresponding parliamentary committees, which will meet at 7 p.m., to approve the candidacies of the six nominated vice presidents, including Ribera and Fitto, and the Hungarian commissioner, who had been the only one who He had not passed the exam the first time. In these meetings, the coordinators will have to approve the candidates with a two-thirds majority, so socialists and liberals are required to vote favorably for Fitto and Varhely.
Negotiations have intensified in the last two days after relations exploded last week after Weber decided to postpone Ribera’s evaluation until he appeared in Congress to explain DANA’s management as part of the war of attrition promoted by Feijóo. But the EPP leader also wanted socialists and liberals to endorse the candidates from Italy and Hungary, which was initially a red line for those two political groups. The problem is that their candidacies could succeed with the EPP and all the forces of the extreme right, but the socialist vice presidents needed the support of the popular Europeans. And the EPP imposed this exchange of stickers as a condition to support Ribera, who is the key piece of the socialist family, and the Romanian Roxana Mînzatu.
The socialists were the first to pave the way by opening up to support Fitto. They did it through the Government of Pedro Sánchez, which is, along with the German party, the most important party in the social democratic family, which claimed to overcome the “crossed vetoes.” The negotiations continued on Wednesday with pressure from Iratxe García and the liberal Valérie Hayer for a written commitment from the three groups that make up the ‘Von der Leyen majority’. The EPP rejected any type of allusion that would constrain its ability to reach agreements with the extreme right.
The conditions that the PPE imposed, however, in its coordinated strategy with Feijóo prevented the agreement from being closed before this Wednesday, which was when Ribera was scheduled to appear in Congress to give explanations about the management of DANA, which was one of them. Even so, early this Wednesday, the leader of the EPP told his group that they will accept Ribera against the criteria of his Spanish delegation, which has shown anger. However, in Genoa they always assumed that overthrowing Sánchez’s candidate was very complicated and they were content with a one-week delay in the decision to wear down Ribera and the Executive.
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