The European Parliament (EP) hearings for the new Commissioners are now over. After some last-minute drama and a little delay, the EP has greenlit all candidates – for the first time in 20 years.
In theory, the confirmation hearings are a great instrument for scrutinising the incoming Commissioners. Such a process can be healthy, especially for a complex polity like the EU (i.e. often accused of being untransparent and unaccountable). In practice, however, it’s compromised by party-political tit-for-tat and structural issues around how it’s organised. Below are my five main takeaways from the last three weeks.
Apparently grilling is only for barbecues
There are systemic issues with the way that the hearings are organised and this compromises the EP’s control function. Much of this is due to how MEPs ask questions. Time slots are calculated tightly and usually don’t allow for follow-up questions, which would be a vital precondition for properly ‘grilling’ the candidates.
Those few MEPs that can raise follow-up questions (namely the coordinators) tend to move on to new topics, wholly divorced from the initial question and even what the Commissioner may have just said in response. Questions are pre-prepared and read out, lacking any sense of spontaneity. MEPs all have their hobby horses and thus don’t use their speaking time to follow up on previous speakers’ questions. There is hardly any coordination, even within the same groups.
MEPs also tend to overload their one-minute speaking time with too many questions, allowing the Commissioner to pick, choose and circumvent uncomfortable questions. Sometimes, MEPs even asked the same questions as a colleague before them. Understandably, MEPs seek visibility vis-à-vis their constituency on points that they’re concerned about – but it really does prevent a proper grilling of the candidates. In short, it lets Commissioners off the hook easily, even if weaknesses are exposed.
A good old-fashioned party-political stitch-up…
Besides these organisational pitfalls, there’s an even bigger argument to make – party politics have pre-determined much of the hearings’ outcome.
Before the process had even started, the big political groups had agreed that all candidates would sail through. While there is a sense of urgency to get the new legislative term up and running to face an increasingly hostile global political environment, such a pragmatic choice raises eyebrows in terms of democratic accountability.
This is even more so when considering that far-right parties have been involved in many important decisions – not only on how the hearings were organised (i.e. the timeline and committees involved) but also the decision-making process that led to all candidates passing. The EPP, together with the far right, for instance, saved Oliver Varhelyi from a second oral hearing. He only had to answer a set of written questions, which is genuinely a bureaucratic exercise and would not have rattled his nerves.
… and national party-politics are creeping in
Due to this political stitch-up, the first week of hearings was as calm as expected. But the pre-arranged deal broke down in the second week due to Spanish national politics. The Spanish People’s Party (an EPP member party) attempted to deflect responsibility for the floodings in Valencia by shifting the blame onto a member of the Social Democrats, Teresa Ribera.
EPP leader Manfred Weber allowed his Spanish delegation ‘off the leash’, possibly to nullify the S&D’s demand to strip Rafaele Fitto of the Eexecutive Vice-President title or to demonstrate authority vis-á-vis Ursula von der Leyen – or both.
Eventually it was agreed to revert to the initial position – the S&D accepted Fitto’s title and the EPP accepted Ribera. Both groups got a little concession, as Ribera had to make an appearance before the Spanish Parliament and the S&D negotiated a written ‘platform cooperation statement’.
Beyond the College: the cordon sanitaire is indeed fraying
This agreement revealed that for the centre-left parties, much more is at stake than ‘just’ selecting the Commissioners – it morphed into a decision on the future of the EP’s governing majority. It intended to foster cooperation among the pro-European majority because the centre-left parties fear a) the far right becoming more powerful and b) a loss of their own relevance over the next five years.
How effectively this agreement will keep the EPP from teaming up with the far right is more than questionable. There’s no concrete language firmly committing to the pro-EU coalition, instead just rather broad and uncontentious (policy) goals and light references to Article 2 TEU, the rule of law and ‘ever closer Union’. It’s rather a kind of fig leaf for the S&D to strike a deal without losing face rather than an effective instrument to retain (or re-establish?) the cordon sanitaire.
The EPP, it seems, is determined to bring EU policy back onto a conservative track – and doesn’t mind dealing with those parties that, until very recently, were explicitly excluded by the pro-EU camp to achieve this.
No real grilling – but not all bad
While the hearings were not the ‘grilling’ they were intended to be, it’s nonetheless a great exercise in transparency and a way of ‘getting to know’ the (usually unknown) candidates and their priorities. The hearing process also forces the Commissioners-designate to get their heads around the topics that they’re going to work on, resembling an onboarding process.
Finally, it’s an agenda-setting tool, as MEPs try (and partly succeed) in pushing the candidate to commit to (policy) action. For this, the questions are sometimes even pre-discussed with the Commissioners-designate in the many meetings they have with relevant MEPs before the hearings begin. This soft agenda-setting tool is not unimportant for a parliament that doesn’t have the right of legislative initiative – despite this being less effective this year than in previous hearing rounds.
While the EP previously managed to use this tool to flex its institutional muscles, it seems that at least its ability to scrutinise – if not its credibility – have been more than a little bruised this time round.
Many MEPs from the centre-left might not vote for the College next week in plenary. But this is just a symbolic and public gesture (as this is a recorded roll call vote). It cannot derail the process as only a simple majority (of present MEPs) is needed, not counting abstentions (unlike for the vote for the Commission President).
After a long institutional turnover year, the new Commission will finally be ready to roll up its sleeves and get to work – most likely on 1 December. The collective sigh of relief is so great that this bout of institutional turmoil (even if support for the new College might be a bit underwhelming next week) will be quickly forgotten.
