The decision on Raffaele Fitto, candidate to become executive vice-president of the European Commission, is in the balance. When it seemed that the political parties of the EU Parliament had found an agreement that would allow the Italian to get the green light from the Chamber, at the last second a clash over the Spanish socialist Teresa Ribera reopened the game.
The destinies of the two vice-presidential candidates are linked, if one falls, the other falls too. Socialists, liberals and Greens asked to remove the position of vice-president from the Italian representative, complaining that a role of such importance could not be granted to the representative of a radical right party, such as Fratelli d’Italia, who is not part of the majority that supports Ursula von der Leyen’s executive.
Defended by the popular
But the People’s Party, of which the politician was a member at the time of Forza Italia, formed a wall around Fitto, threatening to topple Ribera if the green light did not arrive for the Italian. The crossed vetoes had created an impasse which had led to the approval of all six vice-presidents and the Hungarian commissioner Olivér Várhelyi being frozen. Today it seemed that everything had been resolved. “There will be votes this evening and it seems that all vice-presidents and commissioners will be approved, including Fitto, without any change of portfolio”, announced the co-president of the EU Greens, Bas Eickhout, at the end of the Conference of Presidents at the EU Parliament, body that brings together the leaders of political groups.
But at the last minute the meeting of the coordinators of the political groups in Brussels in the Regi commission, which should formally approve Fitto’s nomination, was suspended, according to what we learn from parliamentary sources, because in the parallel meeting of the commissions evaluating Ribera the EPP would have created unwelcome conditions.
The next steps
From a formal point of view, it is up to the meeting of the political coordinators of each parliamentary commission to give an opinion on the commissioners who were questioned in the hearings. The opinions essentially say whether the candidates passed the exam or not. The opinions are then sent to the Conference of Presidents of the Chamber (which brings together Parliament’s group leaders and President Roberta Metsola), which will meet on Monday at the latest. It will be this conference that will give the final OK. At that point only the last step will be missing, that of confidence, which should take place in the Plenary of the European Parliament on 27 November in Strasbourg, with a vote of all 720 deputies. Only when it has received trust will the new Commission be able to take office starting from December 1st.
