- Carmen Descamps, German Association of Energy and Water Industries, Brussels
- Manuel Müller, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Helsinki
- Julian Plottka, University of Passau / Institut für Europäische Politik, Berlin
- Sophia Russack, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels
- The hearings are over, but there is still no majority in favour of the new Commission in the Parliament.
Manuel
The hearings in the European Parliament are over: MEPs spent a week questioning the designated members of the new European Commission to assess their personal and professional suitability for the post. Most of the future commissioners were given the green light immediately afterwards or the following day at the latest. But the votes on health commissioner-designate Olivér Várhelyi from Hungary and on the six Commission vice-presidents have been postponed for the time being.
In today’s European Policy Quartet, we are therefore unable to discuss the outcome of the hearings, but we can talk about developments so far. We are joined for the first time by Sophia Russack, who researches the politicisation of the European Commission and published a paper on the hearings just last week. Sophia, has anything surprised you about the events of the last days?
Sophia
Well, until this Tuesday, the process didn’t surprise me much: everything was as tame as I expected. The fact that Várhelyi was not immediately confirmed is no surprise. But then, it was interesting to see how hard the EPP came down on Teresa Ribera.
There was a kind of cross-party consensus beforehand that none of the candidates would be attacked too harshly and that they would all get through so that the new legislature could get off to a quick start. As a result, MEPs were very cautious during the first hearings. On the last day, however, the EPP criticised Ribera so harshly that the S&D pulled out of the deal and the whole thing is now in danger of falling apart. The dispute over the nomination of Raffaele Fitto as vice-president also seems to have flared up again.
Disputes over Raffaele Fitto and Teresa Ribera
Carmen
I could not agree more with Sophia: The hearings started in a very factual way, with few surprises and no popcorn discussions. At the beginning, it even looked very good for the two most vulnerable candidates – my guess had been that Várhelyi and Fitto would fail.
But this ended abruptly with the hearing of Vice-President-designate Ribera on Tuesday. Suddenly there is a lot of partisan bickering between the parliamentary groups, fuelled by Spanish national politics against the backdrop of the floods in Valencia. Together with the far-right parties, the EPP has really tried to blame Ribera for alleged mismanagement during the flood disaster. I regret the behaviour of some MEPs and the way the hearing for such an important post was misused for national party politics.
Sophia
The question is whether the flood disaster was a reason or a pretext for the EPP in this case …
Julian
My guess would be: a pretext. From my Berlin perspective, it doesn’t seem that this tragic event has shaken Europe as a whole that much. Or do you see things differently in the European capital?
Carmen
I remember from my time in Madrid that there are very entrenched and bitter conflicts between socialists and conservatives in Spain – what is unusual is that they are also being fought on the European stage. Without going into too much detail: Disaster management in Spain is primarily the responsibility of the regions or autonomous communities, and the EPP (or its Spanish member party, which incidentally is also the party of the Valencian regional president) knows this.
So we already know the answer to your question, Sophia! 😉
Partisan politicisation of the hearings
Manuel
A brief comparison with previous hearings in the European Parliament: Since 2004, MEPs have always weeded out some individual problematic candidates – sometimes because of their extreme political views (as with Rocco Buttiglione in 2004), more often because of suspected conflicts of interest.
2019 was special because, for the first time, partisan differences played a central role. The election campaign had been fierce; the parties blamed each other for the failure of the lead candidate process; and for the first time, the EPP and S&D no longer had a two-party majority … As a result, three candidates failed the hearings, one from each major political group (EPP, S&D, Renew). And for the Liberal candidate Sylvie Goulard in particular, this seemed to have far more to do with party politics than with her personally.
This time, party politics were at the forefront from the outset, but the effect seemed to be the opposite: a kind of Mexican standoff in which none of the major political groups dared to reject candidates from other parties, lest they jeopardise their own. As a result, for the first time since the turn of the millennium, all the candidates might get through the hearings – unless it comes to another massacre.
Sophia
Yes, the extent to which everything was negotiated and pre-cooked by party politics right from the start was unusual. The hearings have always been marked by party politics to some extent, but this time it was really extreme.
Does the performance of the candidates still matter?
Manuel
How problematic do you think it is that the performance of the individual commissioners-designate is becoming less important because of the growing role of party politics?
For me, this shows a shift away from a meritocratic-technocratic understanding of the Commission (the Parliament examines whether the candidates are “suitable”) towards a democratic politicisation (parties try to push through “their” candidates). As a result, negotiations on the new Commission are beginning to resemble national coalition negotiations, where parties usually accept ministers from other coalition partners without individual scrutiny.
Sophia
Absolutely! The new level of partisan politicisation is overshadowing what the hearings were originally about: testing whether candidates are fit for the job!
It seems to me that the hearings are now less a “grilling” and more a mixture of a) an onboarding for the commissioners (they have to study a lot to get through them and familiarise themselves with policy areas that were previously foreign to them in a very short time) and b) an agenda-setting tool in which MEPs try to extract as many policy commitments as possible from the future commissioners.
Julian
Of course, the question of what actually counts as “performance” is also interesting here. It has never really been about purely technical expertise, but rather a combination of ticking off certain boxes regarding personal skills, a clean record, eloquent parrying of technical questions, and the candidate’s support for a democratic consensus.
Even the political commitments have been largely theatrical: First, the EPP group participates in the drafting of the mission letters of the commissioners-designate, then they have this agenda publicly confirmed in the Parliament. 🙄
Carmen
Beyond the horse-trading between the political groups, I think it was also clear that the hearings were no walk in the park for the candidates. Some had to go through an extra round (e.g. the commissioner-designate for the environment, Jessika Roswall, who seemed very nervous or simply ill-prepared during her hearing). Others were able to show that they had done their homework and swotted up on their weaker subjects (e.g. Ribera on competition policy). So the hearings were not in vain – but there was definitely room for improvement.
Party politicisation as democratisation
Manuel
One advantage of party politicisation is that it links the appointment of the Commission more closely to the European elections. As it becomes clearer which candidates were pushed through by which party, voters will find it easier to hold the parties to account at the next election.
(Of course, this only works if the media actually cover the hearings, which wasn’t really the case this time. But with more party disputes comes more news value in the long run).
Julian
I think we are talking about a real paradigm shift in European politics – that we suddenly have a real party-political competition between left and right. If you look at how Manfred Weber was courting Giorgia Meloni before the election, this has been in the making for a long time. Also the CSU’s crocodile tears over Viktor Orbán in recent years (or rather months) don’t seem very credible to me.
In the abstract, this is a major step forward in the democratisation of the EU. On the other hand, the whole integration process will be jeopardised if the Europhobes are allowed to get in on the act now. I would be interested to hear what Simon Hix has to say about this.
New balance of power in the Parliament
Sophia
Before we ask Simon Hix, here is my own humble opinion: I think that, overall, the party politicisation of the EU is also part of its democratisation process. Indeed, we are seeing a kind of paradigm shift: after decades of an informal grand coalition, where basically almost all decisions were taken jointly by the S&D and the EPP, there is now a growing divide between the left and the right.
The background to this is the new power structure in the European Parliament. For a long time, the balance of power between the EPP and the S&D was relatively even. But since the elections in June, the EPP is the kingmaker: It can organise majorities on both sides – and has done so recently. The centre-left, i.e. the potential alliance of S&D, Liberals, Greens and Left, no longer has a majority and can only watch helplessly if the EPP cooperates with the far right.
This EPP/far-right majority has already made important decisions about the organisation of the hearings – and now also about the candidate Várhelyi. The centre-left parties would have liked to hold a second hearing with him before the committee makes a decision. Instead, he only has to answer an additional set of written questions, which is much easier.
Manuel
Even the fact that Ribera’s hearing took place after Fitto’s was pushed through by the EPP together with the far-right groups – to ensure that if Fitto was rejected by the centre-left groups, they would have the opportunity to retaliate against Ribera as the most prominent S&D candidate.
I find it striking how much the EPP has taken ECR candidate Fitto under its wing here. And the fact that this decision on the order of hearings was taken long before the floods in Valencia also suggests that the criticism of Ribera is now more of a pretext.
EPP vs. Greens
Sophia
And it’s not just Manfred Weber’s flirt with the far right (which is already much more than a flirt). It is also about the extreme rejection, almost hostility, of the EPP towards the Greens. This demonisation – with a rhetoric that sometimes makes cooperation with the Greens seem a bigger problem than dealing with the far right – puts even more pressure on the centrist coalition.
Julian
I agree with you, Sophia. The tragic question is whether this extreme polarisation between the EPP and the Greens really contributes to the democratisation of the EU. In Germany, Toni Hofreiter very soberly rebuked the CSU some time ago, explaining that the hostility of Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder towards the Greens resembled the Kremlin’s script for the destruction of liberal democracy.
At least in the CDU, I still see an intra-party dispute as to whether this course is sensible or whether it endangers our democracy. It is frightening that the CSU is not only successful in Germany with its misguided line, but also seems to be setting the tone in the European Parliament. It would certainly be good for the Parliament if the departure from the previous permanent consensus did not immediately lead to a radical split between the camps.
Sophia
I do think the EPP is also divided on this issue. It also realises that the more it moves to the right, the more it moves into anti-EU waters – where the majority of it does not really belong.
EPP in search of its identity
Carmen
These attacks on the Greens have gained momentum especially as a result of the farmers’ protests, haven’t they? As a result, von der Leyen withdrew or watered down some of the Green Deal measures in the spring. In this case, the politicisation of the EU also seems to go hand in hand with increasing patronage politics – instead of a competition of (real) ideas for the political future of Europe.
Sophia
The EPP had a very difficult time with Ursula von der Leyen in the last legislature. It is true that the president of the Commission always struggles to keep her own party happy, because the Commission is a multi-party college and can never follow the course of just one party. But I think the EPP had a particularly hard time with “their” president, as she pursued a very green and progressive agenda.
This must also be taken into account when assessing the EPP’s current behaviour. The strong “left-wing bias” (from a conservative perspective) of the EU agenda over the past five years has been difficult for the EPP to digest – and now the party is taking countermeasures.
Carmen
Like a ship’s crew working against its own helmswoman? A von der Leyen II Commission should also remain exciting from this perspective, as the EPP continues to (re)discover its identity. To stay with a transport metaphor: Hopefully they won’t end up veering off the track to the right.
Will the Parliament cease to be a reform engine?
Julian
Given the major challenges facing the EU in terms of foreign policy and, in particular, enlargement, I would be very worried if the European Parliament ceased to play its role as the last reform engine (albeit one that has been idling for some time) as a result of the new centre-to-far-right coalition. The EPP used to be the driving force behind European integration, but it has long since been replaced in that role by the centre-left parties.
Manuel
Yes, there has been a real change in language: Before the election, the EPP talked a lot about how it would only cooperate with parties that were “pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine and pro-rule of law”. Since then, it has become clear that, firstly, it has no problem cooperating, at least selectively, with all far-right groups in order to create majorities against the S&D and Renew. And secondly, that it is prepared to be extremely lax in its interpretation of the pro-Europe criterion in particular.
Suddenly, even parties such as Fratelli d’Italia or Finland’s Perussuomalaiset are considered “pro-European” – despite the fact that the former called for the abolition of the primacy of European law just two years ago and the latter’s election manifesto still states that Finland’s exit from the EU “should not be treated as a taboo”.
Julian
If the EPP now regularly forms majorities with the Eurosceptics in the Parliament, we could also be facing a paradigm shift in the logic of interaction between supranational and intergovernmental EU institutions. If the Parliament – and then probably also the Commission – adopts the course that the Council and the European Council have been following for a long time, it is not clear to me where the impetus for future reforms will come from.
In that case, the EPP should have the fairness to tell Ukraine that it is not really serious about its geopolitical commitment. For without reforms, the EU cannot become fit for enlargement.
Why no coalition agreement?
Manuel
One thing that puzzled me back in the summer was why the S&D and Renew did not insist on negotiating a written coalition agreement with the EPP before von der Leyen’s re-election in order to explicitly rule out joint voting with far-right parties. Such a stable coalition would of course have been something new in the European Parliament. But given the strength of the far right and the mistrust between the EPP and the centre-left, it could have been a very useful instrument to secure pro-European majorities for this legislature.
If the S&D is now complaining that “[u]nder the irresponsible behaviour of their group leader Manfred Weber, the conservative European People’s Party broke the historic pro-European, democratic agreement between conservative, social democrat, and liberal groups in this house”, then this is also due to its own failure to formalise this “agreement”.
Julian
Now I have to refer to the fate of the German traffic lights: Would such a coalition agreement have been viable at all?
Any coalition in the European Parliament would be a traffic light XXL – and if no majorities can be organised to implement an agreement, then it is not worth the paper it is written on. Perhaps the S&D and the Greens were afraid that they would look bad in public if that happened. Although it would certainly have symbolic value to be able to hold a coalition agreement against the EPP (and von der Leyen) if they take a turn to the far-right now.
Carmen
In retrospect, such a European coalition agreement between the three strongest political groups would probably have been a sensible solution. But would the threat of not confirming von der Leyen as Commission president have been enough leverage for the S&D and Renew to persuade the EPP?
We should not ignore how heterogeneous the European party families and the often even more broadly defined political groups in the European Parliament are. Would the groups have been able to independently take a decision on a) the pros and cons of such a coalition agreement and b) the exact wording? I’m not sure.
The structure of the new Commission
Manuel
Let’s look ahead to the time after the confirmation in the Parliament: There was a lot of talk in the run-up about the strengthened role of “Queen” von der Leyen, about the vice-presidents as the centre of power, about the overlapping portfolios of the individual commissioners … What do you expect from the structures and policies of the new Commission?
Julian
There is one aspect I find very exciting about the Commission structure: On the one hand, Jean-Claude Juncker (or Martin Selmayr) has created path dependency with the division between vice-presidents and ordinary commissioners – aka ministers and state secretaries. On the other hand, I have the impression that the spirit of (now I’m writing the bad word) subordination of the ordinary commissioners to the vice-presidents hasn’t really survived.
My impression is that the structure is now less about efficiency within the Commission and more about political prioritisation. Moreover, the prominence of the executive vice-presidents made it easier to take all the quotas into account when allocating the EU top jobs, since in addition to the four presidents, the High Representative and the posts of NATO Secretary-General and IMF Director, there were five other prominent posts to be allocated this year. The overlapping portfolios ss such contradict the goal of efficiency and hierarchy. It seems that von der Leyen has been more interested in form than substance here.
Carmen
Since you mentioned Martin Selmayr: I find it remarkable that in the last legislature the Commission wasn’t secretly led by the chief of staff any more. Many people will remember the “Berlaymonster”. But in recent years, the focus has been on von der Leyen herself.
More efficiency through hierarchisation
Sophia
One aspect I think is important: Yes, it is true that Ursula von der Leyen has managed the Commission very centrally, and I expect her to continue to do so. But she did not invent the trend towards presidentialism. Jean-Claude Juncker and José Manuel Barroso also managed their colleges centrally – in their own different ways.
This style of leadership is a direct consequence of EU enlargement. In a college of 27 (and soon more?) members, there can be little collegiality. One person has to set the tone and prioritise what the Commission should and should not do.
Manuel
Expectations of the Commission have also changed: Whereas in the past the EU was mainly a regulatory and legislative institution, in times of “permacrisis” it must also become more executive and able to react more quickly to external events. It is clear that greater centralisation of decision-making helps with this (and also with bridging party-political differences between commissioners).
Julian
Especially in foreign policy, I am curious to see whether Kaja Kallas as High Representative will subordinate herself to von der Leyen’s central leadership and be content with the second row, as Josep Borrell has done in public (except for the period after 7 October 2023).
Either von der Leyen gets more in line with Juncker’s style towards the High Representative in this area, or I see a conflict brewing between the two. Kallas’ affinity with the media has even been mentioned as one of the arguments in favour of her nomination. I have the impression that even the Commission and the European External Action Service themselves expect the new High Representative to have a stronger external profile.
Will party politics become more important in the Commission too?
Carmen
I hope that after the period of political trench warfare and deal-making, the focus will now return to policy-making soon. With the change of political leadership in the US and the uncertain political future of Germany with snap elections in early 2025, there is no shortage of external factors calling for this, more or less vociferously. And I agree with Sophia: A centrally organised Commission is nothing new and, to be honest, not such a bad idea given the current political situation.
Sophia
One feature that unites the Commission and the European Parliament in the current legislature is the strong presence of the EPP. Traditionally, the college of commissioners has always consisted of a multi-party coalition, with the EPP and the Socialists roughly balancing each other out. This is now likely to change: There are 14 EPP members among the commissioners-designate, while the S&D and Renew together have only nine commissioners. The remaining four belong to far-right parties or are independents.
What this means for the Commission’s working methods remains to be seen. Perhaps it will become more partisan, with the EPP trying to make its mark. If that happens, it would certainly change the character of the Commission.
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Carmen Descamps works as Manager for EU Energy and Digital policies for the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) in Brussels. |
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Manuel Müller is a Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki and runs the blog “Der (europäische) Föderalist”. |
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Sophia Russack is a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels. |
The contributions reflect solely the personal opinion of the respective authors.
All issues of the European Policy Quartet can be found here.
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