Clear way to unblock the new European Commission, as confirmed by several parliamentary sources. The European People’s Party (EPP) has supported this Wednesday, despite the opposition and the maneuvers of the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Spanish Teresa Ribera as number two with the position of vice president of Just, Clean and Competitive Transition and in charge of the powerful European Competition portfolio. The Social Democrats have accepted the candidate for commissioner of the Italian far-right Giorgia Meloni, Raffaele Fitto, appointed by the head of the community Executive, Ursula von der Leyen, as vice president of Cohesion and Reforms. The endorsement of Fitto, which was a red line for weeks for the S&D social democratic group in the European Parliament, has been the price to unblock Ribera’s appointment.
“The most important thing is that the European Commission takes office on December 1,” said the president of the EPP, Manfred Weber, after announcing the agreement, reached between the heads of his political family with social democrats and liberals. “Europe needs stability. As an EPP group we supported Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal from the first moment, because we believe that it is a compromise, a proposal for the future Commission that unifies Europe, that unites Europe again,” added the conservative, who has maintained blocked the community Executive for a week.
In the package of six community vice presidents (including the Spanish and the Italian) that the EPP, social democrats and liberals have assumed, also includes the Hungarian commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, an ally of the national-populist prime minister Viktor Orbán. The committees in the European Chamber endorsed the agreement this Wednesday night, although the political groups have included several reservations in an annex that is not binding to the free passage letter that will be sent to Von der Leyen. In the case of Ribera, the EPP has stated that she should leave her position if a judicial process proceeds against her for the management of the dana in Spain. In the case of Fitto, social democrats and liberals express their disagreement with his rank as vice president, according to parliamentary sources. The next step for the new Commission to begin functioning on December 1 is for MEPs to vote for the entire college of commissioners of the Von der Leyen team in a plenary session in Strasbourg scheduled in seven days.
Polarization and fights
What happened this week, with enormous polarization between the groups and very tough fights over the candidates for community vice presidents who were pending evaluation by the committees that deal with the issues they manage in their portfolios, is just a preview of the legislature that begins now. Furthermore, a period is approaching in which the European Commission appears to be much more unstable and in which everything indicates that it will be increasingly common for national political discussion to land in the European Parliament. That’s what happened to him. Feijóo’s Spanish PP has used this case to cover up the management problems of the regional government of the Valencian Community (in the hands of a popular party) during the dana, as criticized by the Spanish socialists.
The EPP, with 189 MEPs, the most powerful group after the elections to the European Parliament in June gave more weight to the conservatives and the extreme right, has thus managed to delay the Ribera (and Fitto) vote scheduled for last Tuesday by a week, after the parliamentary hearings of those designated as vice presidents. He has also managed to get the pro-European groups – which demand that the cordon sanitaire against the extreme right be maintained – to assume Meloni’s candidate and share the burden of endorsing Orbán’s, the EU’s wayward partner.
Meanwhile, the socialists and liberals have managed to get the conservatives to accept the new number two of the Commission, Ribera, despite the fact that they had objected and raised serious doubts about the candidacy of the Spanish woman, who is called to be the great social democratic counterweight in a very right-wing community Executive. Weber has ended up disavowing Feijóo. The conservatives waited for the Spanish vice president to conclude her speech in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid to talk about the issue, but she ended up moderating her tone.
“Everyone must respect the code of conduct of the European Commission,” said the president of the EPP, about that document, which all the commissioners sign and which states that they will leave office if the president so demands. “If someone can no longer perform their duties and responsibilities, then they must resign. This is also valid for Teresa Ribera,” Weber added.
Unrest in the Spanish PP
Feijóo’s PP, which tried to dynamite her appointment and has tried to implicate her in the management of the damage that has devastated the Valencian Community, demanded to veto her, directly, and that the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, send another candidate. The Spanish Popular Party, who have had a very harsh tone with Ribera and about letting her pass, can now threaten to vote against (or abstain) in the full vote of the entire Commission, even if her entire political family supports her. It is a paradox: the community Executive that must begin is the one that will have the most PP commissioners in history. But the popular Spaniards are not happy, according to parliamentary sources.
The final agreement – which unlocks a total of six vice presidents and a commissioner who are added to another 19 who had already received the support of the parliamentary committees two weeks ago – arrives this Wednesday, shortly after the appearance of Teresa Ribera in Congress to explain, at your own request, the management of the dana. That appearance in the Spanish Parliament had become a fundamental condition for the Popular Party. Weber thus granted Feijoo a week to capitalize on the attacks on Ribera and try to cover up the regional management of the dana, while adding attacks against Sánchez, the only social democrat from a large country left in the European Council and with whom The president of the EPP has a pending dispute.
The Bavarian also avoided a signal to the European Commission and Von der Leyen that he himself and the European Parliament have a certain power to block the formation of the new community Executive – even if it were for a limited time.
Iratxe García’s social democrats emphasize that it belonged to the entire Commission, at a global geopolitical moment in extreme tension due to Russia’s war against Ukraine and the prospect of a tariff escalation from the United States to the EU with the arrival of Donald Trump to the House. White. Von der Leyen wants the new Commission to start functioning on December 1.
The Italian social democrats had already opened themselves days ago to supporting Fitto. as Romano Prodi, one of the fathers of the Democratic Party, former Italian prime minister and former president of the European Commission, had urged the elimination of crossed vetoes and for the political groups of the European Parliament to support both the Italian Fitto and Ribera.
Collaboration pact
Socialists, liberals and popular have also signed a written declaration of collaboration that would mark the general lines of cooperation during the legislature that begins. Something that for social democrats and liberals is an essential and essential compensation in exchange for endorsing Fitto and Várhelyi. “We are determined to work together to strengthen the European Union,” says the text, to which EL PAÍS has had access, and which is very similar to the guidelines that Von der Leyen set for the legislature that begins.
The document is not too detailed and is based on nine main lines, from collaboration to strengthen the rule of law and democracy to promoting an “effective” immigration policy and advancing security and defense. However, it does not include anything that ties the hands of the signatory parties to cooperate in alliances with other groups, an essential condition for the EPP, the most powerful group in terms of number of MEPs in the European Parliament, which does not want to give up variable geometry and seeks to be able to choose to agree on both sides of the hemicycle, for example, with the ultra-conservative European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR), the group that includes Brothers of Italy, Meloni and Fitto, with whom it has already collaborated.
The popular ones did not want a written declaration, an attempt was made to draft one in July to support the majority that elected Von der Leyen for a second term, but it did not work because it contained elements of cooperation on policies such as immigration, which the conservatives rejected. Now, Weber’s party sees the text as a way to regain trust, party sources say.
