Oettinger
divides loyalties in the European Parliament
Parliament’s
right to scrutinize appointments of commissioners has been hard won —
and must not be cast aside.
By TIM
KING 11/25/16, 5:34 AM CET
The desire of senior
members of the European Parliament to protect Günther Oettinger from
public scrutiny about his proposed change of responsibilities as a
European commissioner indicates a failure to grasp what’s at stake.
The issue of how
free the president of the European Commission is to reshape his
college part-way through a term is at heart a trial of strength
between the Berlaymont and Parliament. High-ranking MEPs like Manfred
Weber and Ingeborg Grässle would be wise to look after the interests
of their institution, rather than molly coddle the scandal-plagued
Oettinger, even if he is a fellow German Christian Democrat.
Up until Tuesday,
there were whispers — stoked perhaps by the German commissioner’s
enemies — that the center-right European People’s Party was
pressing for him to be excused a public examination of his fitness to
change from the digital economy and society portfolio to that
covering budget and human resources.
The attempt has
failed and is therefore now denied. There will be a public exchange
of views with MEPs from the Budgets, Budgetary Control and
Constitutional Affairs Committees.
That is all for the
good. Given his recent remarks to a business audience in Hamburg
seemingly mocking Chinese people, women and gay marriage, plus his
use of a private jet belonging to a lobbyist with links to the
Russian government, the last thing Oettinger needs is another
closed-doors meeting.
Conflicting
loyalties
Not for the first
time, the prospect of a commissioner being given a mauling by the
Parliament has brought on an uncomfortable case of divided loyalties
in the EPP.
Weber, recently
reelected as leader of the EPP group, must weigh his loyalty to the
German Christian Democrats against his loyalty to the institution of
the Parliament. The former demands that he protect Oettinger; the
latter that he put the independence of the Parliament ahead of the
comfort of the Commission.
It’s the same for
Grässle, who chairs Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee. As a
rule, she is ferociously combative — countless witnesses who have
appeared before her committee still bear the emotional scars — but
a click of the fingers from the party hierarchy acts like a
tranquilizer dart, turning her from tiger to tabby.
Weber in particular
should tread carefully. He is putting himself up for election as the
EPP nominee for Parliament president. Whoever wins the EPP nomination
is virtually assured the presidency because the EPP is the body’s
biggest political group and can probably count on the support of the
second-biggest group, the Socialists & Democrats. The two have a
tradition of sharing out the top jobs between them. In which case the
contest to take over the presidency from Martin Schulz in January
will effectively be decided in December, when EPP MEPs make their
choice, likely between Weber, Parliament Vice President Antonio
Tajani, veteran French MEP Alain Lamassoure and Ireland’s Mairéad
McGuinness.
How Oettinger’s
nomination is now handled will provide a felicitous test of Weber’s
appreciation of Parliament’s institutional significance. Its right
to scrutinize the appointment of commissioners has been hard won and
should not be put at risk — certainly not for the sake of
protecting Oettinger, or his boss, Commission President Jean-Claude
Juncker.
At the end of the
public examination, MEPs will not be given a vote on Oettinger’s
new responsibilities.
There was no such
vote in July when Valdis Dombrovskis took over responsibility for
financial stability, financial services and capital markets union
from Jonathan Hill, who resigned as Britain’s European commissioner
after the vote for Brexit. But back in June 2008, when Jacques Barrot
was switched from the transport portfolio to justice and home
affairs, the Parliament held a vote, as well as a separate vote on
the nomination of a new commissioner, Antonio Tajani.
Julian Priestley,
who as secretary-general of the Parliament spent 10 years up to 2007
as the institution’s most powerful bureaucrat, devoted a chapter of
his entertaining 2008 book “Six Battles That Shaped Europe’s
Parliament” to how Parliament acquired the powers to vote on the
appointment of a new Commission. He gave most credit to Klaus Hänsch,
a German Social Democrat MEP who was president of the Parliament when
a new Commission was being formed in 1994-95. It was he who
instituted the practice of committee hearings for
Commission-nominees, which passed off uncontroversially in 1995 and
1999, but blew up in the face of José Manuel Barroso, the Commission
president-designate, in 2004, when Parliament threatened to reject
the college. Two nominees — Rocco Buttiglione and Ingrida Udre —
were replaced and other portfolios were switched. On each occasion
since then, in 2009 and 2014, a nominee has been rejected (Rumiana
Jeleva and Alenka Bratušek).
“It has been a
case of pushing procedures to the limits, but not quite beyond” —
Julian Priestley, former secretary-general of the European Parliament
Priestley stressed
how Parliament attained its position of power incrementally. “It
has been a case of pushing procedures to the limits, but not quite
beyond,” he wrote.
The lesson of such
struggles is that small steps can have a significant effect on the
balance of power between the two bodies. That contest is not yet
over.
The procedures for
assessing nominations are set out in the Parliament’s rules of
procedure — in rule 118 and in Appendix XVI. A revision of those
rules was set in train after the 2014 hearings and the revision —
drafted by Richard Corbett, a British center-left MEP, and the
Constitutional Affairs Committee — is to be put to the Parliament
for approval in the coming weeks. That would mean the revised rules
would take effect from January, after Oettinger makes his appearance
before the committees sometime in December.
The current rules
make a distinction between i) the nomination of an entire college of
commissioners at the outset of the five-year mandate; ii) the
nomination of an individual commissioner, either at the admission of
a new member country or to replace a commissioner who resigns; and
iii) a substantial change to the portfolio of someone who is already
a commissioner. The revised rules would narrow the difference between
how the latter two cases are treated.
I do not myself
think it makes much difference that a new commissioner is subjected
to a hearing, whereas a commissioner whose portfolio is being changed
is merely invited for “an exchange of views.” Both cases involve
a hearing in front of a parliamentary committee and the television
cameras.
But under the
current procedures, the newly nominated commissioner receives a
stricter form of evaluation. The revised rules would prescribe that
Parliament make a similar evaluation of a commissioner changing
portfolios.
I have spoken to
some in the Parliament who think that the revised rules, if they come
into effect next year, would guarantee a vote in the event of a
commissioner changing of portfolios; and others who think it would
not.
How useful a
precedent is the Dombrovskis-Hill scenario, where Dombrovskis was
already the vice president in charge of “a deeper and fairer
economic and monetary union” and Hill’s powers were effectively
being passed upward? A switch from commissioner for the digital
economy and society to budget and human resources — with a remit
that runs across all departments — seems of a different order.
A sense of loyalty
to the EPP family should not blind either Weber or Grässle to their
role as custodians of Hänsch’s achievements. They must let
Oettinger’s hearing take its course and let Oettinger and Juncker
take responsibility for the outcome. It was Juncker who decided to
nominate Oettinger for new responsibilities. Parliament should not
abase itself in order to accommodate that mistake.
.webp)
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