Commission nominees face grilling over finances

Romanian and Hungarian choices have some explaining to do to MEPs.

Two of the more controversial nominees for the next European Commission will appear before MEPs on Thursday to answer questions about potential conflicts of interest.

According to an internal European Parliament note, seen by POLITICO, Rovana Plumb of Romania and László Trócsányi of Hungary will be grilled by members of the Legal Affairs Committee, which is scrutinizing the financial affairs of Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed team.

The MEPs decided Wednesday to call in Plumb, who is slated to get the transport portfolio, to explain why she didn’t declare two loans worth nearly €1 million to the Parliament. One of the loans was for a real estate purchase and the other for a political donation to her Social Democratic Party.

“It was decided that further clarification is needed on this and that she will be invited to come to the committee meeting tomorrow to answer questions,” according to the note.

MEPs will also quiz Trócsányi, who has been assigned the neighborhood and enlargement portfolio, about a law firm he founded in 1991.

“The Greens asked for the discussion to be reopened and raised a lot of issues related to his law firm and its connections with the Hungarian government,” the note said. Trócsányi is a former justice minister under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Earlier this month, Trócsányi told POLITICO in a text message that “in 1991 at the moment of the foundation of Law Offices Nagy és Trócsányi my shares in it were equal to 1/3. This participation shrunk over time and today it is 0.”

The official hearings of von der Leyen’s team are scheduled to take place between September 30 and October 8, with the new Commission expected to take office on November 1. The European Parliament has to sign off on the entire team.

If the two prospective commissioners can’t satisfy the MEPs about their financial dealings, the committee could recommend they shouldn’t get roles under von der Leyen.

On Wednesday, MEPs also agreed to ask Austria’s Johannes Hahn, the proposed budget commissioner, to sell the shares he holds in several companies. In a letter to the Legal Affairs Committee chair, seen by POLITICO, Hahn said he has shares in banks including the Erste Group and Raiffeisen Bank International and he has had “the same amount of shares [since] well before I took office” as a European commissioner in 2010.

MEPs will also ask for “additional information” from Janusz Wojciechowski of Poland, nominated as the agriculture commissioner, regarding an apartment he owns in Brussels. The European People’s Party said “there are still inconsistencies related to the apartment in Brussels that need to be further clarified,” according to the parliamentary note.

Several other commissioners-designate — Spain’s Josep Borrell, France’s Sylvie Goulard, Belgium’s Didier Reynders, the Czech Republic’s Věra Jourová and Portugal’s Elisa Ferreira — were given the all-clear on potential conflicts of interest by the Parliament committee. However, the note said the far-left GUE group “tried to re-open the discussion” on Goulard’s connections to the Berggruen Institute, a U.S.-based think tank. Goulard, a former French defense minister slated to be the single market commissioner, declared she had earned $300,000 over three years from the institute.

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The committee’s process of scrutiny is “absolutely not serious,” said Manon Aubry, a French GUE member of the committee. “We have no means to investigate and verify information.”

“The whole procedure is extremely politicized with blocs defending their candidates,” she said. “There are double standards from one candidate to another.”

Lili Bayer contributed reporting.