The level of concern that the debate on Teresa Ribera’s candidacy has reached in the European Parliament was once again marked by the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who for the second consecutive day attended a meeting with the leaders of the different political forces , given the possibility that this situation ends up delaying the formation of the new community executive. The more time passes, the more tangled the discussion over the confirmation of the still third vice president of the Spanish Government, to whom the European People’s Party (PPE) has imposed as a condition for its evaluation that she go to Congress to explain herself and that she openly commit to resigning in the event that she is involved in a judicial process as a result of her actions or inaction during the Valencia floods.
That the president of the Commission has to go to the offices of the European Parliament two days in a row to try to clarify the situation perfectly reflects the concern raised by Ribera’s hearing on Tuesday and its political consequences. The personal attacks that the spokesperson for the socialist group, Iratxe García, has published on social networks against the leader of the popular party, Manfred Weber, do nothing to improve the atmosphere in an environment in which the institutional calendar is dangerously narrowed. There is only one date lefton the 27th of this monthso that the Plenary Session of the European Parliament can approve the composition of the new Commission, before December 1, which is when it must be fully operational.
The Ribera issue is not the only one that hinders the process. Two other commissioners, the Hungarian Oliver Varhelyi and the Italian Raffaele Ficco, are not comfortable for the socialists, who look for excuses not to vote for either of them because they come from radical right parties, although they know that both Hungary and Italy They are entitled to one commissioner each. Worse still, if neither of them are approved, both Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni would have the key to prevent the new legislature from starting if they do not want to send another candidate.
This is why all parties agreed to put all vice presidents in the same package and postpone the vote until everyone’s positions have been clarified. For now, according to well-informed sources, the EPP could accept the commissioners Hungarian and Italian, but on condition that the Socialists also vote for them, who otherwise suspect that they could use this situation to attack the Popular Party, for example in the imminent early elections in Germany. Ribera is asked to go to Congress to explain herself – as she will do at her own request next Wednesday – and assume her political responsibilities and to accept that she would have to resign if she were involved in a judicial process. Once appointed, commissioners are immune to the decisions of their country’s government and, if the European Parliament wanted to remove one, it would have to withdraw its confidence in the Commission as a whole, including the president.
This is the official position of the EPP, which does not prevent the Spanish Popular Party from maintaining pressure to try to destroy Ribera’s candidacy. The two ‘heavyweights’ of the Spanish delegation, Dolors Montserrat and Esteban González Pons, insisted this Wednesday that “Europe cannot be the hiding place to avoid assuming responsibilities and that is why Teresa Ribera cannot be commissioner.” And it seems that this work is taking hold among the center-right deputies from other countries who attended the Spanish hearing and, above all, that they have taken the attacks of García, Ribera’s main defender, badly.
However, the most likely thing is that in the end the historic institutional pragmatism will prevail and that the new European Commission will take office on December 1, with all the commissioner candidates in place, except for something so scandalous that not even Ribera herself I could ignore it. And for now it has shown signs of being aware of this situation in which it finds itself, practically surrounded by minefields. At his hearing, it was notable that he sometimes answered questions in Spanish in English, an uncourteous gesture in European politics. The objective was not to be heard referring to the Valencia floods in Spanish so that no one could take a video and use it to attack her on social networks.
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