In the end, “interesting”: the keys to the approval of Ribera for the EC and the European blow to the PP

After much sound and fury, . The current third vice president for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of the Spanish Government is going to assume the Competition portfolio in the new European Commission, in addition to the executive vice presidency for a Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition. She will be, de facto, the number two of , the socialist with the most power in the community institutions, a pillar of the tenth legislature because her policies will be core for the Europe of the coming years.

Her appointment was agreed this Wednesday between the three main blocs that already appointed the German president of the EC last summer, and on which European institutional stability is based: the traditional right, the socialists and the liberals.

It took a week to reach an agreement. There were other names in question, such as that of Raffaele Fitto, appointed by the Italian prime minister, the far-right Giorgia Meloni, for another community vice presidency (that of Cohesion and Reforms), and that of the Hungarian Olivér Vàrhelyi, an ally of the national-populist Viktor Orbán , future commissioner of Animal Health and Welfare, but the Spanish has been the great touchstone of the debate. The fault lies with the Spanish Popular Party.

Those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo have tried to transfer the national political fight, the most ruthless, to Brussels, blocking the appointment of Ribera for his alleged responsibility in the mismanagement of DANA that three weeks ago hit the Valencian Community and Castilla La Mancha, in his intervention in Congress. In an attempt to hide the share of blame that one of their own, the Valencian president Carlos Mazón, has, Génova turned the fan on full blast against the Spanish, convincing the European People’s Party (EPP) to support its position.

The leader of the EPP, the German Manfred Weber, bought Feijóo’s plan and last Tuesday, in Ribera’s examination before the MEPs, he organized a hunt for the woman never seen before in the European Parliament. The vote for his position and that of six candidates, in total, was paralyzed until the waters returned to normal, as has finally happened. There is an agreement between the three parties, but it is at the cost of very hard concessions and, above all, a mistrust that will weigh down the entire mandate. Ribera wins, Feijóo loses, all of Europe pays a price.

The agreement

For there to have been white smoke, everyone had to give in, which has led to a scenario never seen before in which, with no turning back, the cordon sanitaire of the extreme right in the Government of Europe is broken, for example.

Let’s go with the agreement. What is known at the close of this edition is that Weber has had different meetings this Wednesday with Iratxe García (the Spaniard who presides over the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament) and Valérie Hayer (the Frenchwoman who holds the same position in Renew Europe, the liberals). In them the approval would have been agreed en bloc for all the pending commissioner candidates, proposed by the countries and sifted by Von der Leyen.

Ribera and Fitto would pass with the initially proposed powers intact – becoming heavyweights of this EC -, while the Hungarian Varhelyi will have controversial dossiers such as reproductive and sexual health and the right to abortion removed from his powers, issues in those who the extreme right. Nor will it be responsible for managing health crises. His case was less complicated because, in addition, Varhelyi is already a commissioner, responsible for Neighborhood and Enlargement.

One of the things that Núñez Feijóo has not managed to force is that Ribera’s candidacy be submitted to the secret vote of all the MEPs of the competent committees. That would have allowed them to vote against, something that they will not be able to do if approval comes in the first phase, in which only the coordinators vote, Europa Press reports.

The schedule that Von der Leyen manages is that her new team is fully voted on November 27 and can take office on December 1, which has always been the ideal date on her agenda. Europe cannot wait for partisan fights and further alarming the process would have been a collective defeat.

In the three-party negotiation, an agreement has also been reached, promoted by the socialists, so that the democratic and pro-European bloc commits not to negotiate or agree with the radical right groups of the European Parliament in the five years of its mandate that begins. now. If for social democrats and liberals it is compensation for their endorsement of profiles such as those of Fitto and Varhelyi, for the popular ones it serves as confirmation that they have regained some confidence in the alliance that, over the decades, has sustained community power. It is not total, no, but it is sufficient. It is enough for this procedure.

The document, however, is ambiguous, since it does not include anything specific that serves as a red line. This is due to the demands of the PPE. Therefore, there is a framework agreement, a kind of declaration of intentions, but it remains to be seen what the majority group in Parliament does, which so far this term has already shown signs of rapprochement with the ultras in budgetary matters, foreign and environmental policy. Above all, Weber has his sights set on the group of European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR), the group that includes Meloni and Fitto’s Brothers of Italy.

Already in 2022, a similar agreement was reached, in that case with legislative and political priorities, which proved to be a disaster in which almost everything, in the end, had a place.

The losers

Although the week has been very tense in Brussels, in reality what was expected has happened. Manfred Weber’s fight, opposing Von der Leyen herself to please the PP in the Ribera case, has ended because it endangered the entire European framework, the stability of the bloc, the commitments between the Twenty-seven and the alliances without which You cannot govern the time to come.

The German has made all the noise he can, he has tightened the rope, he has created a grotesque situation – one thing is the tough negotiations of a candidate and another is that a domestic dispute puts all the appointments in danger – and he has put of nerves to his own benchmates. All for a personal matter. But, in the end, the whole was greater than the part and had to give in.

Weber has acted in this way to put a spanner in the works of the Commission of his colleague in the German CDU, Von der Leyen, whom he simply cannot see because he took away the presidency of the EC in 2019, because it is more flexible and less dogmatic. than him, because they think differently and act differently. He already tried to make re-election difficult for him in the European elections in June, without ever breaking, but pushing to the limit. Now he has done it again.

With the Ribera test He has analyzed who is with him in his group, who fully supports him at a time when critical voices are heard precisely because of his approach to the extreme right. At the same time, importantly, he tried to secure Feijóo’s support at the congress that the European formation will hold in the spring, precisely in Valencia.

In the end it has not upset the balance in Brussels, but it has been just barely. The negotiations have come to a standstill, after the fierce siege of Ribera last week. He has fueled the internal resistance, he has taken six commissioners hostage – among them, also essential, the head of common diplomacy, the Estonian Kaja Kallas – and he has remained a good friend, with the PP.

All of this has a cost. Of distrust with the rest of the centrist interlocutors, of fear within his own party, of uncertainty in all of them, because no one knows in the future what new move Weber, a man eager for power, has prepared. In the party they look with anguish at the 2025 elections in Germany, first, and then in Poland, in which the ligoteo with radicalism he can play tricks on lifelong conservatives.

The partners of the governability bloc also lose, especially the socialists, who have had to swallow the enormous toad of having two far-rightists in Von der Leyen’s team. Each country proposes, therefore it is logical that the candidacies of nations governed by ultras such as Italy or Hungary have corresponding profiles, but in the case of the Italian Fitto his powers will be many, very powerful. In his hearing before the MEPs he was elusive, but his profile is not encouraging.

For this reason, the S&D group had reservations about his appointment. There has always been a clear union to prevent anti-European people or those with approaches contrary to the rule of law from reaching the institutions, but the rise of these policies, which already occupy 25% of the seats in the European Parliament, has also changed the tables. It is a shock that there are red votes for the neo-fastists, but that is how it will be.

“Socialists face a shameful retreat,” he says, for example. a medium that points out as especially harsh the role of Iratxe García, who has been categorically opposed to the Italian. In this case, and pressured by the complications of Ribera’s nomination, it was the President of the Spanish Government himself, Pedro Sánchez, who lowered the demands.

During his visit to Brazil for the G20, he was asked if accepting Fitto was a red line for him, as his party colleague had expressed. Sánchez responded: “It’s not that there is a line to cross or not.” And more: “It is the Italian Government that decides who goes or does not go.” He did not want to get involved, because his own proposal to the EC was at stake. “Each country has the right to a commissioner,” he recalled, emphasizing the three-way agreement that already allowed Von der Leyen’s re-election and which, he said, should be followed as a roadmap for this tenth term.

With all the brawl, the real loser will be the European Parliament itself, which promises to be a cage of crickets, far beyond the crossed vetoes that now seem to be resolved.