Ribera refers to the Commission’s code of conduct in the face of pressure from the EPP: he would resign if Von der Leyen asked him to do so

Sowing doubts about Teresa Ribera’s management in the DANA catastrophe in Valencia has been the umpteenth attempt by the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to weaken the Government of Pedro Sánchez in Brussels and has unleashed, along with the popular efforts to force the socialists to support Giorgia Meloni’s candidate as vice president of the European Commission, a crisis that, if not redirected, leads to unpredictable results. The group led by Manfred Weber has joined this strategy by making it a precondition for Ribera that he commit to resigning if he were to have to sit on the bench for the management of the tragedy. The Spanish woman’s response is that she will follow the code of conduct of the European Commission.

“All commissioners adhere to the Commission’s code of conduct,” they point out from the Ministry of Ecological Transition. And what does that text say? The only reference to resignation processes that it contemplates is when the president of the community government so demands. “A member of the Commission must resign if requested by the president in accordance with article 17.6 of the EU Treaty,” states the code of conduct to which the ministry refers.

In practical terms, Ribera will resign if asked by Ursula von der Leyen, as established by the rules. For the moment, the president of the European Commission is trying to unblock the situation, which will last until at least next week, and maintains her support for Ribera intact. “The president has given her confidence to the group of candidates for the position of commissioners and the process for their confirmation is ongoing. Obviously, nothing has changed with respect to this initial position,” responded the spokesperson for the community government, Eric Mamer, to the specific question of whether the president continued to trust the socialist, whom he has placed in the juicy vice presidency of Competition and Transition. Clean and Fair.

By then the PP, with the collaboration of its European family and the extreme right, had already declared war on Ribera and found the argument in the management of the DANA, despite the fact that the command corresponded to the Generalitat Valenciana of Carlos Mazón. that ignored the alerts that came precisely from the institutions dependent on the department of Ribera.

Weber also decided to postpone Ribera’s evaluation to next week, bowing to Feijóo’s interests so that he goes to Congress first to give explanations for DANA, even though this means a delay in the entire procedure. But that maneuver meant breaking the previous agreement that had been reached with socialists and liberals, which are the other two groups that are part of the European coalition and that had determined to evaluate all the vice presidential candidates at the same time to prevent some of them from being taken as ‘hostages’, but there was no talk of leaving it for the following week.

“That marked a before and after,” say socialist sources, who consider that “distrust” has set in with the EPP interlocutor. However, in the Socialist Group they do not only reduce the conflict to the Spanish candidate but also maintain their rejection of making Meloni’s candidate, Raffaele Fitto, vice president, which would mean raising the leadership of the community government to the extreme right and a party (ECR , the Conservatives and Reformists) that is not part of the European coalition and did not even support Von der Leyen’s re-election.

“The S&D is not going to negotiate a package of six vice presidents because six vice presidents are not three political families,” these sources point out about the agreement for the ‘Von der Leyen majority’, which is made up of the Popular Party, Socialists and Liberals (and on this occasion also the greens who voted in favor). “Therefore, we are only going to respect that agreement between the three families and not enter into any other type of negotiation,” they point out.

However, the EPP could push Fitto’s candidacy forward because they give it the numbers in the commission with the forces of the extreme right, while for Ribera the ‘yes’ of the group led by Weber is essential. Knocking it down would, therefore, for the socialists be a breach of the agreement between those three great families. What they do not clarify is whether they would vote in favor of the College of Commissioners as a whole at the end of November if Fitto achieves agreement with the popular and extreme right.

There is still a way to go to get to that point. The negotiations are fallow, although the lines of communication are open and Von der Leyen’s spokesperson maintains that he is in “permanent contact” with the groups. The first step is to evaluate the vice presidential candidates and the Hungarian candidate, who is the only one who has not approved at the moment. If they pass, the entire cabinet will be voted on. If one falls, Von der Leyen would have to decide whether to keep it before the vote or ask the member state for another name. And no one rules out at this point that everything will blow up, with the EU entering unknown territory.