Alberto Núñez Feijóo assumes that the socialists will end up supporting Giorgia Meloni’s candidate for vice-president of the European Commission, Raffaele Fitto, in exchange for the unblocking of Teresa Ribera. “Now the PSOE’s offer in Europe is to reach an agreement with what they call the European far right,” the PP leader said in a speech. From Genoa they have been pointing in this direction since early in the morning, after having scored last week the goal of having delayed for a week the entire process of election of vice-presidents of the community government. The Social Democrats (S&D) group led by Spaniard Iratxe García, however, remains silent.
The big obstacle in the election process of the new European Commission has always been the Italian Fitto, after the socialists and liberals showed their categorical refusal to appoint him vice-president, under the pretext that the Conservatives and Reformists (ECR ) are not part of the European coalition which supports Ursula von der Leyen. However, the European PP led by the German Manfred Weber sets the condition that these two groups support Meloni’s candidate and use Ribera’s candidacy as a bargaining chip.
Weber’s pulse
For the moment, the evaluations of the six vice-presidents and the Hungarian commissioner Oliver Varhely remain suspended until an agreement is reached between the three main political families. Feijóo’s PP maneuvered in Brussels to delay the process and ensure that Ribera was not elected last week, as expected. And with this decision, all assessments have been delayed. What the European PP said, echoing to some extent the Genoa story, is that Ribera should be accountable to Congress. His appearance is scheduled for Wednesday 20.
From there, the tension is at its maximum and the “Von der Leyen majority” is threatened. Of course, the trust between the people, the socialists and the liberals is completely broken even if there is finally an agreement which allows the new European Commission to be put in place. Weber challenged the social democrats and, incidentally, Von der Leyen herself, from his political family, to whom he sent the message that the European Parliament has power over its mandate in which the EPP is in the majority with the forces of extreme right against. whose sanitary cordon was lifted, despite the rejection of the leaders of the traditional right, including Von der Leyen. However, the president does not include Meloni in this bag, with whom she made the gesture of nominating her candidate for vice-president, even if neither in the European Council nor later in the European Chamber, the Fratelli d’Italia did not supported his candidacy. .
Feijóo does not know if his European colleagues will support Ribera
What they are arguing in Genoa is that the Social Democrats have given in and will support Fitto in exchange for their European colleagues’ approval for Ribera. “The far right is not so ultra if it protects Ribera,” criticizes the PP of Feijóo, which thus opens the door for the vice-president to obtain the approval of the European Parliament against her criteria. In fact, the Spanish people continue to believe that the parliamentary committees charged with examining Ribera will suspend his nomination.
Faced with the rejection of the Spanish PP, which wants Sánchez to appoint another person for the future community executive, the popular Europeans have reduced their demands on Ribera by conditioning his evaluation on his participation in the Congress, which will take place on Wednesday, and her undertaking to resign if she is prosecuted – some sources speak of if she is convicted – for the management of DANA. The socialist adheres to the European Commission’s code of conduct, which only considers asking for resignation if the president requests it.
There is still room for a hypothetical agreement allowing the entire European Commission to vote next week in Strasbourg. As a prerequisite, it is first necessary to evaluate the vice-presidents who pass the procedure (by a two-thirds majority of the coordinators of the corresponding parliamentary committees or by a simple majority of all MEPs who make up the committee if they do not pass). not). the first attempt) and finally, the entire community government is validated in a plenary session of the European Parliament.