As the European Parliamentary hearings of the new European Union commissioner nominees began on Monday, November 4th, left-wing lawmakers in Brussels aimed to prevent the sole conservative candidate up for a vice presidential post from getting the job, whatever the cost.
Overrepresentation in positions of power relative to their vote share is never enough for the left: it also needs the conservatives to be excluded as much as possible.
The French delegation of the S&D brought up the need for one final push (again), reiterating the group’s earlier threat to blow up the entire process because of Commissioner-designate Raffaele Fitto. MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the head of the French Socialist Party (PS) in Brussels told Politico on Tuesday that voting down the entire College was still on the table unless Ursula von der Leyen strips the Italian commissioner-designate of his elevated role:
This is the time for our S&D group to show the [European People’s Party] that they have no majority without us and that they must choose between the pro-European forces in Parliament and the extreme right in all its nuances.
Italy’s veteran EU affairs minister Raffaele Fitto was nominated for the second von der Leyen Commission by the country’s national conservative government, headed by PM Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (FdI/ECR) party, and the president-elect chose to award him with one of the five executive vice presidencies in an effort to amend her strained relationship with Rome.
Even though the “executive” part has little meaning now since there will be no ‘regular’ vice presidents (with the exemption of the foreign affairs chief’s, but her position is arguably the greatest anyway), left-wing parties—especially the social democrat S&D group—went into frenzy over the idea of von der Leyen allowing a conservative anywhere close the EU’s top leadership circle.
“Proactively placing the [European Conservative and Reformist group] at the heart of the Commission … would be a recipe for losing [S&D] support,” the group said in a statement in September, shortly after von der Leyen revealed her distribution of posts, threatening to vote down the entire College of Commissioners if need be:
If [S&D’s] expectations are not met … it will be very difficult, even impossible, to support the commissioners presented by Ursula von der Leyen.
But von der Leyen did not give in to this tantrum, especially because the left has ample representation in the top EU circles. From the six Commission vice presidents, two will come from the S&D, two from the liberal Renew, one from the centrist EPP, and one from the conservative ECR. None for the Patriots, the biggest conservative party, and third largest in Brussels. Moreover, the socialists will also have the European Council presidency, so there’s really nothing to moan about.
Regarding these threats, the EPP would indeed have a hard time getting von der Leyen’s College past the threshold without the S&D’s 136 votes—but only if the group were to vote unanimously, which is an unlikely prospect as several socialists MEPs indicated that they’d rather see the commission formation through as fast as possible than to become another roadblock.
But the question remains: how many other leftist MEPs feel like the French and would rather delay everything just to see the conservatives out of the picture? Before the plenary vote on the entire College, Fitto will need the approval of the Regional Development (REGI) committee on November 12th, a vote worth paying attention to.
