Almost six months after European elections that bolstered the political right, the team of top officials that will lead the next European Commission until 2029 looks on track to take office on December 1. The three major centrist political groups in the European Parliament announced a deal to approve the entire 27-strong lineup on Wednesday night after weeks of grappling, pledging in a joint statement to “work together with a constructive approach.”
With burning questions about the climate and migration on the table, it is the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) group that seems to have most strengthened its hand. “I promised people a […] Europe without bureaucracy and I will deliver. And if I do not deliver, then we will wake up in 2029 in an extremely populistic Europe,” EPP head Manfred Weber said in comments reported by the Financial Times.
Led by President Ursula von der Leyen, herself a German EPP politician who was approved for a second term at the helm of the EU executive branch in July, the European Commission’s team of 27 officials will guide the EU’s climate, trade and migration policy. Under the EU’s complicated division of powers, each member state gets to nominate a candidate to send to the powerful commission, but it’s up to von der Leyen as president to assign portfolios, at which point the European Parliament approves the candidate.
Before giving that blessing, however, EU parliamentarians spent the past several weeks grilling the 26 remaining candidates. In the end, the two that faced the biggest resistance were Teresa Ribera, a Spanish Socialist from the EU’s S&D group, and Raffaele Fitto, an Italian from the far-right European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) group.
Ribera, Spain’s outgoing environment minister, faced resistance from the Spanish contingent of the EPP over her and the government’s handling of recent disastrous floods in Valencia. Fitto’s nomination as an executive vice president of the European Commission was considered unacceptable for many on the left, and even controversial within the S&D group. Many bristled at the thought of having a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, with its neofascist roots, in such a position.
Source: DW
The post EU Commission deal puts center-right in driver’s seat appeared first on Vastuullisuusuutiset.fi.