Political group coordinators in the European Parliament failed to find a consensus Wednesday regarding the fate of the Hungarian EU commissioner-designate Olivér Várhelyi, further delaying the decision on whether to approve him for the Health and Animal Welfare portfolio in the second von der Leyen cabinet.
In their relentless crusade against Hungary, the left-wing parties refuse to budge even under the pressure of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who wants to see her new cabinet up and running by early next month.
During his confirmation hearing last Wednesday, the leftists argued they were not convinced by Várhelyi’s views on the specific issues of abortion and vaccines, but their questioning made clear that they were simply punishing the Commissioner-designate for being nominated by the national conservative Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s government.
Without the necessary votes, MEPs first asked Várhelyi to answer further questions in written form and postponed the decision until Monday, when they postponed it for a second time until Wednesday, November 13th. Now, according to a member of the socialist S&D group, there will not only be a third delay but there likely won’t be a decision until sometime next week.
“The decision on the election of Orbán’s man as EU commissioner has been postponed again,” wrote Hungarian MEP Klára Dobrev (S&D) on social media on Wednesday.
“The Tisza party [Hungarian opposition and member of EPP] has asked the People’s Party to vote for Olivier Várhelyi, but no decision will be made this week,” she continued. “One thing is certain, we Social Democrats will never vote for a candidate who works solely in Orbán’s interests.”
Dobrev’s claim could be misleading, as several papers reported that von der Leyen’s EPP was keen on joining forces with the three national conservative parties to greenlight Várhelyi, and only backtracked in order not to anger its traditional allies on the left and therefore jeopardize the approval of Italy’s conservative Raffaele Fitto as one of the six vice presidents of the incoming Commission.
Previously, the Hungarian daily Népszava cited an unnamed source claiming that there was a tentative agreement already between the EPP and S&D, and the details would be hammered out by the Wednesday deadline. According to the paper, the socialists would drop their opposition to Várhelyi, but only if the EPP agreed to limit the commissioner-designate’s responsibilities.
According to Népszava’s source, Várhelyi “will eventually be given the green light, but his mandate is expected to be curtailed. He could lose his animal welfare and/or food safety [aspect of his] portfolio.”
It’s worth noting that since the “health” aspect is not on the chopping block in any scenario, it seems abortion was never even an issue to begin with—as Várhelyi himself often reminded the leftists, it’s not an EU competence—and was simply the Left’s way of justifying their ideological bias.
It’s also speculated that the eventual Várhelyi deal is part of a much larger political game between the socialists and centrists. The S&D might have made a package deal that ties the compromise solution on Várhelyi to approving Fitto in exchange for EPP’s support for the socialists’ Teresa Ribera. Fitto is portrayed by the leftists as a “neo-fascist” just because he’s coming from Giorgia Meloni’s national conservative government, while Ribera is facing widespread backlash for her potential role in the government’s failures with regard to the recent Spanish floods.
Nothing is certain but the delay makes sense if the negotiations on the executive VPs and Várhelyi are connected, as no decision has been made in either case as of Wednesday afternoon.
Group leaders have until November 21st to make a decision—the official deadline to finish all parliamentary hearings and submit their final evaluation of the new commissioners to a plenary vote during the November 25-28th session.
