The rift between the European Parliament’s two largest parties, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is widening by the day—despite the balance of power in Brussels, which relies on their grand coalition staying intact.
Even though the confirmation hearings of all new EU commissioner candidates finished last week, there seems to be no way out yet from the deadlocked negotiations between the mainstream parties. This may well delay the entire process, to the point where the second von der Leyen administration could not even commence work before the end of the year.
The latest development came from the Spanish Partido Popular (PP), the second-largest delegation of EPP, which said it would vote against the country’s socialist Commission VP candidate, Teresa Ribera—as well as the entire College of Commissioners so long as she remains a part of it. In short, the PP is demanding the government replace Ribera with a new candidate to end the deadlock.
“There is no possibility that Partido Popular will support an EU government in which Teresa Ribera is part after everything that has happened in these [last] two weeks,” PP spokesman Dolors Montserrat said on Saturday, referring to Ribera’s alleged failure to manage the severe floods in Valencia last month which have to date claimed the lives of 220 people.
The move comes after the socialists unexpectedly left the negotiations at the end of last week by giving a hard ‘no’ to Italy’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) candidate, Raffaele Fitto, who’s favored by the EPP following pressure from von der Leyen. She aims to mend her strained relationship with PM Giorgia Meloni by granting the Italian candidate an executive vice presidency in her new cabinet.
Fitto was rejected by the S&D members solely because he’s a conservative, as leftists argued that giving him a top seat in the incoming Commission would legitimize other “neo-fascist” parties in Europe.
With no reason to stay polite anymore for the sake of an agreement, it seems PP finally went on the offensive as well. Party members already held Ribera responsible for the death of 200 people through her mismanagement of the floods in her role as the current Ecological Transition Minister of Spain—but Montserrat’s remarks were the first time PP definitively ruled her out as commissioner.
The spokesman also said that the PP will vote against Ribera with the consent and support of EPP leader Manfred Weber, and asked other parties within and outside the group to consider doing the same.
“We will see if the MEPs want to sponsor with their vote a vice-president who has a problem of management and public responsibility in which 220 Europeans have lost their lives in the Valencian Community and Castilla-La Mancha,” Montserrat said.
One day later, on Sunday, PP President Alberto Núñez Feijóo publicly demanded that the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez withdraw Ribera’s nomination and replace her with a new name that’s worthy of the support of Spanish society.
“Sánchez would be mistaken [to keep Ribera as nominee] because the European Commission cannot be the hiding place of a minister who owes a lot of explanations to the people,” Núñez Feijóo said.
EPP itself, however, is not ready to demand a new name from Madrid; not yet, at least.
For the time being, the majority of EPP keeps Ribera’s confirmation on the table with two conditions: that the commissioner-designate gives a detailed explanation about her role in the devastation before the Parliament—possibly this Wednesday, November 20th—and that Ribera will commit to resign, should she be put on trial back in Spain despite the immunity her new job would provide her.
Meanwhile, four other Commission VP-designates are also pushed to the side with Ribera and Fitto’s fates remaining undecided, as the initial agreement between the parliamentary groups was that all six would be confirmed together as a “package deal.”
There is only one more candidate who hasn’t been cleared by MEPs yet: Hungary’s commissioner-designate for health and animal welfare Olivér Várhelyi. The current enlargement commissioner was criticized by the leftists based on his country’s allegedly bad track record on women’s reproductive rights (despite Hungary being quite liberal in this regard), but his nomination is ultimately being blocked by the S&D for the same reason as Fitto’s—for being a conservative.
This unprecedented deadlock in the Commission formation process shows that even though the right-wing shift in June’s EU elections was not enough to dethrone the centrist-socialist mainstream ruling coalition in Brussels, it succeeded in weakening their ranks and exposing long-running divisions between them.
Nonetheless, what happens in Brussels over the next few days will determine whether the European Parliament can vote to approve the new executive as a whole next Wednesday, November 27th, so it could take office in early December.
