New college of commissioners or real estate agency? Houses, thousands of square meters of land or shops. These are some of the assets that candidates for the new European Commission recognize in their declarations of interests and that MEPs in the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) are already analyzing. The future commissioner for sustainable transport and tourism is a landowner in Greece, as revealed by Politico, which had access to the documentation.
Apostolos Tzitzikostas, nominated by Greek Prime Minister Kyriákos Mitsotákis, one of the strong men of the European People’s Party, owns 16 apartments, 655,463 square meters of land, six stores, several garages and warehouses, according to information from this media. He also owns 200,000 euros of shares in companies in various sectors (from dairy products to photovoltaic energy) and was one of the beneficiaries of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds for one of his farms (18,116 .30 euros).
The Italian Raffaele Fitto, whom Ursula von der Leyen appointed executive vice-president for cohesion and reforms (bringing the far right to the heart of ministerial power for the first time), also declares an important real estate asset: he owns seven apartments and It contains part of three others. He also owns 15% of a pharmacy which he estimates to be worth 150,000 euros.
The real estate capital of Bulgarian Ekaterina Zaharieva, candidate for the Start-Ups, Research and Innovation portfolio, is also significant: in addition to an apartment in Sofia, she owns a plot of land of 6,850 square meters with a house on the Greek coast. Halkidiki peninsula which he acquired in 2008. Between 2016 and 2018, he bought two more houses and land in his country.
Slovenian Marta Klos, who, before being appointed, worked as lobbyist de Kreab and former diplomat, declares having accumulated one million euros in savings in the bank. The candidate for enlargement commissioner is one of the weakest in Von der Leyen’s cabinet. The EPP has cast doubt on his suitability due to accusations from his political family’s Slovenian organization that he worked for Yugoslav secret services and had ties to Russia.
But part of the interest of the declarations lies precisely in what they hide. The candidate to succeed Josep Borrell as high representative, Kaja Kallas, left the section relating to the financial interests of the spouses empty. The former Estonian prime minister was in the spotlight a few months ago when news broke that a company linked to her husband was still doing business with Russia, despite her government’s official position that relations commercial activities had to be completely interrupted. The company in question is Stark Logistics, a shipping company that still claimed to ship to Russia, although most of the goods it transported were covered by sanctions, so it had to redirect its business to other countries.
An opaque process
According to the executive director of the company, the goods currently transported are not sanctioned and are remnants of actions. Before the war, on February 24, 2022, Stark Logistics managed between 60 and 70 shipments per week and now only manages two, linked to the company AS Metaprint, manufacturer of metal containers. Kallas reports charges in four legal entities: Tristock, Tallinn Visitors Club, AS Framm and Novaria Consult.
Beyond providing information on potential conflicts of interest, the Legal Affairs Committee has very limited ability when it comes to questioning the suitability of candidates based on this information. , as various parliamentary sources recognize. The analysis process which began on Thursday is limited to analyzing the press release presented by the future commissioners, without external data and without investigative capacity, and is reduced to financial interests.
La Izquierda spokesperson Manon Aubry spoke most clearly against the process, which she called a “farce” at the end of the meeting. “Many of their candidates have worked for years for large companies or lobbies. But JURI cannot comment on this type of conflict of interest because it is strictly limited to an examination of financial aspects! », expressed the parliamentarian from La France Insoumise, who denounced that the parties which support the Von der Leyen majority must look the other way, with cases like that of the current commissioner for climate action, Wopke Hoekstra , who previously worked for the oil company Shell and who appeared in the “Pandora Papers” for having an account in the Virgin Islands (and will have her own in charge of tax matters) or the Portuguese commissioner in charge of financial services and Union of Savings and Investment, Maria Luísa Albuquerque, who was the “minister of austerity” during the crisis and who later worked for the banks.
“A completely biased, opaque and impotent process. In short, a farce,” estimates Aubry, who assumes that the 26 candidates will pass the filter of the JURI commission, even if some of them were asked for additional information as part of the process and as happened in 2019 in cases like this. of Josep Borrell, whom the parliamentary body finally exempted from the recommendation to sell the shares he held.
The deadline given to JURI to analyze the 26 expressions of interest expires on October 18. Exams (audiences) to the new commissioners of the European Parliament on the skills needed to take charge of their portfolios will take place between 4 and 12 November. If the corresponding committees reject one of the candidates (which requires a two-thirds majority in a first vote and a simple majority in a second vote), the member state must present another candidate who will follow the same process.
