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Tuesday marked the end of a long week of hearings in the European Parliament of the 26 Commissioners nominated to form the new European Commission. All eyes were on Raffaele Fitto: the Italian, currently Minister for European Affairs, Cohesion Policy and the PNR in the government led by Giorgia Meloni, is in fact the only ECR representative to make up the EU executive team. And it is on him that the concerns of the left have obviously been felt all the more acutely. The fear of the socialists, according to the classic scepticism towards the right and the conservatives, is that his role might be too important, capable of shifting the balance of the whole Union towards right-wing ideas and policies. In fact, Fitto has been given two fundamental delegations, cohesion and reforms, two issues on which the European Union bases most of its policies today, and he would find himself managing billions of euros and having to provide for the next programming of the cohesion funds. The fear on the left is that the Commission will move too far to the right, despite the fact that the vote was clear: It is unacceptable to put Fitto and Ribera on the same level, the agreement of the European People’s Party was with pro-European forces, such as the socialists and liberals, and Ribera is a socialist. There was an agreement between the People’s Party and the socialists and it must be respected,’ said Iratxe Garcia Peres, a Spanish socialist and leader of the S&D group. And indeed, the announcement has come: socialist sources say that ‘the trust with the EPP is completely broken, there is no more. Fitto will under no circumstances have the votes of the Socialists in the Committee on Regional Affairs. It is not a Spanish problem, nor a problem with Italy or with Fitto, but a problem with the extreme right’. Teresa Ribera, on the other hand, is the Spanish Commissioner-designate, a woman of trust and Pedro Sanchez’s right-hand woman. She has been put in charge of the delegation for competition, but also and above all for a clean, fair and competitive transition. At home, Ribera is the Minister for Ecological Transition, in charge of river management. In short, on the one hand, there are fears that Raffaele Fitto’s influence and presence could move the European Commission too far to the right, and on the other hand, with Ribera, the Socialists and Greens are trying to continue the green policies started in the last legislature under the decisions of former commissioner Frans Timmermans.
How Fitto’s hearing went
I want to be clear,” said Fitto during the hearing before the Regional Development Committee, “I am not here to represent a political party. I am not here to represent a Member State. I am here today to reaffirm my commitment to Europe. I am aware of the requirements imposed on Commissioners by the Treaties and the Code of Conduct. If confirmed, I will scrupulously respect them and always act in the interests of our Union and our citizens. I am also aware,” the Vice-President designate added, “that the role of Executive Vice-President carries a great responsibility. For the first time, an executive Vice-President will be in charge of cohesion and reform’. The left also raised the usual alarms about the commissioner’s alleged affiliation to nostalgic ranks: these theses were promptly denied by Fitto himself, who recalled, among other things, his youthful militancy in the Christian Democratic Party, the Italian political party of Christian Democratic and moderate inspiration founded in response to fascist repression. In his areas of responsibility, Mr Fitto reiterated his desire to work for the benefit of the Union and its citizens in the European spirit, stressing the need for a strong response to demographic challenges, in particular to combat the abandonment of rural areas in favour of large urban centres: this is indeed the aim of cohesion policy, to succeed in connecting and eliminating the disparities between the various areas of the continent. Work will therefore focus on combating depopulation and the brain drain, including through the development of services and infrastructure. Cohesion policy as we know it” will therefore be defended: citizens and the various regions will remain at the centre, with a special focus on the populations of island regions and smaller islands. Different local needs must be respected, with a clear strategy for the development of industry and tourism. This will require coordinated efforts in transport, agriculture, fisheries and tourism policies. And fundamental to all this will be the question of simplification, of making the Community machine less bureaucratic: a Europe that is closer to the people and the territories, and no longer the gigantic monster that hangs over the citizens in the popular imagination. Greater simplification, Fitto insisted, did not mean a lack of territorial control, democratic guarantees or transparency. Raffaele Fitto was clear, calm and prepared,’ said Nicola Procaccini, co-chair of the Ecr Group in the European Parliament. If one were to judge his hearing on its merits, he would already have a large majority of consensus, minus those who have a political position of prejudice against him, and that will remain. However, the opinions on Fitto have certainly caused some embarrassment, with some members of the Italian Partito Democratico putting the interests of their parliamentary group before those of Italy: Procaccini said he was “worried that in the PD this position of wanting to deprive Fitto and Italy of the vice-presidency of the EU Commission persists. Will they ever stop putting their own party before their own country?
The Ribera knot between Popularists and Socialists
The situation is similar in Spain with vice-president-designate Ribera, who is being opposed by some Spanish Popularists who would prefer the Socialist to speak in the Spanish parliament before being confirmed, following the tragic floods in Valencia. On the other hand, the European Socialists had announced in advance that they would not let things slide on Fitto, but this was not a good precedent in view of the opinion on Ribera, which would be heard at a later date. The co-president of the Greens in the European Parliament, Bas Eickhout, was clear with the Popularists: “Any attempt by the EPP to delay the confirmation of qualified Commissioners-designate such as Teresa Ribera and Stéphane Séjourné in retaliation for Fitto will mean that the group will be responsible for delaying the confirmation of the entire EU Commission just to confirm a far-right candidate who is unfit to represent the EU executive as executive vice-president”. But despite this “biased political position” announced by Procaccini, good comments on Fitto’s hearing also come from the Democrats. It was difficult before the hearing to support Teresa Ribera in the role of vice-president and it is even more difficult now,” said Peter Liese, EPP coordinator in the environment committee. The Socialist rejection of Fitto is therefore a form of blackmail against the People’s Party, which is accused of wanting to move the European Union to the right.
It is therefore undoubtedly a complex situation that has not yet been resolved. It has reached the stage of crossed vetoes and a stalemate that can only be resolved in the coming days. None of the 6 candidates for the vice-presidency of the European Commission has been elected, not least because there are those who are still trying to disregard the vote of the citizens in the last European elections, who clearly chose to move to the right. And if this is what the citizens want, Raffaele Fitto cannot be excluded from the government team. Also because through the ‘single package’ system, dropping Fitto would mean dropping all the other candidates. Now, on the basis of the recommendations of each committee, the Conference of Presidents will be called on 21 November to make its final assessment, declare the hearings closed and finally publish the assessment letters. It will therefore take a few more days to solve the last puzzles before the new European Commission is finally formed. Europe therefore risks losing ground in the new global political game, which is not only clearly shifting to the right (as confirmed by Donald Trump’s victory in the US), but is also accelerating and running fast, to the detriment of the old continent, which is still blocked by left-wing vetoes.