MEPs withhold confirmation from five nominees

The S&D group is split over whether to play nice with the EPP or to hold further hearings and claim a scalp.

Five of the nominees for the next European Commission have been told to provide further written answers before any committee decision can be made on their confirmation.

Following unsatisfactory performances in their confirmation hearings this week, Vera Jourovà from the Czech Republic, Tibor Navracsics from Hungary, Miguel Arias Cañete from Spain and Pierre Moscovici from France, have been given until Sunday night to respond to new written questions.

The UK’s Jonathan Hill has been asked both for new written responses and to return to the Parliament on Tuesday (7 October) at 1pm for a second hearing. At the moment, the plan is to hold this ‘mini-hearing’ in private with only the group co-ordinators.

The hearings were going smoothly this week until Wednesday afternoon, when Hill and Jourovà held hearings at the same time (they were jointly number 13 on the list). Hill gave a weak performance and did not demonstrate a firm grasp of European Union policy, and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) MEPs said they would need him to do a bit more homework. This in itself would not have harmed the S&D’s ‘grand coalition’ alliance with the EPP, given that Hill is not a member. But on Wednesday night the Socialists went after Cañete, who is part of the EPP.

The EPP retaliated the next morning against Moscovici, who is a member of the S&D.

Jourovà, who gave a weak performance but no worse than some other nominees earlier in the week, has been caught in the crossfire. She is from the Liberal ALDE group and she has been pulled into the fray in order for the Parliament to have a hostage from all four main political groups.

Navracsics’s performance at his hearing was seen by many MEPs as arrogant and unapologetic so they had no choice but to make him sweat. He has few defenders even within his own EPP group.

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The number of written questions given to the nominees varies widely. Jourovà has been sent 32 questions to answer, and Hill has been sent 23. Navracsics has been sent only six. The questions for Cañete and Moscovici have not yet emerged. The Parliament’s legal affairs committee is evaluating some last-minute changes that Cañete made on his financial declaration form and will meet to take a decision on whether the changes pose a conflict of interest on Monday at 7pm.

The questions are on specific policies that the MEPs felt they did not get sufficient answers on. Jourovà has been asked about data protection, the European public prosecutors office and the European arrest warrant. Hill has been asked about the single EU deposit guarantee scheme, capital markets union, bank stress-tests, eurobonds and benchmarks.

The questions are largely just a method to justify withholding confirmation from the nominees until next week. The committees are charged with taking a decision on nominees within a day of their hearing, but they can extend this time by asking for more written responses or a second hearing. The political groups want to keep hostages from the opposing side, and they also want to hear from next week’s vice-president nominees before they take decisions on these vulnerable nominees.

A wild card next week will be Alenka Bratušek, the nominee from Slovenia, who is accused of suppressing an ethics investigation into the way she nominated herself to be commissioner. She is from the liberal ALDE group and could become a new focus for EPP and S&D joint criticism after her hearing on Monday afternoon.

The political group leaders are scheduled to meet next Thursday (9 October) to try to reach an agreement. It is understood that if the S&D backs off on Cañete, the EPP will back off on Moscovici. But this would still leave the fate of the three other nominees up in the air.

According to Parliament sources, the S&D group is split about what to do. Group leader Gianni Pittella wants to keep the peace with the EPP and wants to stick to the scheduled final confirmation vote date of 22 October. But there is another faction within the group that wants to claim a scalp, or at least hold further hearings, even if this means delaying the final confirmation vote. This faction is led by Roberto Gualtieri, who had challenged Pittella for the group leadership, according to the sources. However Gualtieri said he is on Pitella’s side of the discussion.