Sowing doubt about the management of Teresa Ribera in the DANA disaster in Valencia was the umpteenth attempt of the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to weaken the government of Pedro Sánchez in Brussels and triggered, with the popular efforts to force the socialists to support Giorgia Meloni’s party. candidate for vice-president of the European Commission, a crisis which, if not redirected, leads to unpredictable results. The group led by Manfred Weber joined this strategy by demanding that Ribera commit to resigning if he had to sit on the bench for the management of the tragedy. The Spaniard’s response is that she will follow the European Commission’s code of conduct.
“All commissioners adhere to the Commission’s code of good conduct,” they emphasize from the Ministry of Ecological Transition. And what does this text say? The only reference to the resignation processes he considers is when the president of the community government requires it. “A member of the Commission must resign if the President so requests, in accordance with Article 17.6 of the EU Treaty,” specifies the code of conduct to which the ministry refers.
Concretely, Ribera will resign if Ursula von der Leyen requests it, as provided for in the regulations. For the moment, the President of the European Commission is trying to unblock the situation, which will last at least until next week, and maintains her support for Ribera intact. “The president has placed her confidence in the group of candidates for commissioners and the confirmation process is underway. Obviously, nothing has changed compared to this initial position,” replied the spokesperson for the community government, Eric Mamer, to the specific question of whether the president continued to trust the socialist, whom he placed in the juicy vice-presidency of Competition and Competition. Clean and fair transition.
At that time, the PP, with the collaboration of its European family and the far right, had already declared war on Ribera and found the argument in the leadership of the DANA, despite the fact that the command corresponded to the Generalitat Valenciana of Carlos Mazón. ignored the alerts that came precisely from the institutions dependent on the department of Ribera.
Weber also decided to postpone Ribera’s evaluation until next week, yielding to Feijóo’s interests to first go to Congress to give explanations about DANA, even if it means a delay in the entire procedure. But this maneuver meant breaking the previous agreement reached with the Socialists and the Liberals, who are the two other groups that are part of the European coalition and who had decided to evaluate all the vice-presidential candidates at the same time to prevent some of them to be taken as “hostages”, but there was no question of leaving him for the following week.
“This marked a before and an after,” say socialist sources, who believe that “distrust” has set in towards the EPP interlocutor. However, within the Socialist Group, not only do they reduce the conflict to the Spanish candidate, but they also maintain their refusal to appoint Meloni’s candidate, Raffaele Fitto, vice president, which would mean elevating the leadership of the community government to the far right and make it a party. (ECR, the Conservatives and Reformists) which is not part of the European coalition and did not even support the re-election of Von der Leyen.
“The S&D will not negotiate a package of six vice-presidents because six vice-presidents are not three political families”, underline these sources about the agreement for the “Von der Leyen majority”, made up of the People’s Party, Socialists and liberals (and on this occasion also the Greens who voted for). “Therefore, we will simply respect this agreement between the three families and not enter into any other type of negotiation,” they emphasize.
However, the EPP could advance Fitto’s candidacy because it gives him numbers in the commission with the far-right forces, while for Ribera the “yes” of the group led by Weber is essential. Overthrowing him would therefore amount, for the socialists, to breaking the agreement between these three great families. What they do not specify is whether they would vote in favor of the college of commissioners as a whole at the end of November if Fitto reaches an agreement with the people and the far right.
There is still a long way to go to get there. Negotiations are on hold, although lines of communication are open and Von der Leyen’s spokesperson says he is in “constant contact” with the groups. The first step is to evaluate the vice-presidential candidates and the Hungarian candidate, who is the only one not approved at the moment. If they are adopted, the entire cabinet will be voted on. If one fails, von der Leyen will have to decide whether to keep it before the vote or ask the member state for another name. And no one excludes at this stage that everything explodes and that the EU enters unknown territory.
