The Vice-President of the European Parliament Victor Negrescu declared on Tuesday that it is not expected for any designated European Commissioner to encounter any problem in obtaining the validation vote of the competent committees that will hear the all candidates for portfolios between November 4-12, with the exception of the case in which one of them will make a huge mistake.

„At the level of the European Commission, we work closely with each individual commissioner to prepare them for these hearings and there are discussions with the MEPs precisely to explain each portfolio and the priorities of each commissioner. I know that Mrs. Roxana Manzatu also does this and, in principle, there should be no problem in getting the vote, as in fact I expect there will be no problem for any European Commissioner”, declared Negrescu during a briefing for Romanian journalists.

He said that the procedure is a „technical one”. „Only if you make a huge blunder, you are rejected, to be very clear. At the moment, no designated commissioner has made a huge blunder that would put them at risk during the hearings,” he explained.

Victor Negrescu specified that in the coming days the discussions will continue in the Committee for Legal Affairs of the European Parliament (JURI), which analyzes the declarations of assets and interests of the designated commissioners.

„There have already been initial discussions, three commissioners have been validated, the rest will follow”, said Negrescu, stating that in their case additional information was requested, which in many cases consisted of asking for the completion of mandatory forms with missing information.

„The Legal Committee, compared to five years ago, no longer has the same capacity to intervene. According to the code of procedure of the European Parliament, the Legal Committee has lost its powers to be able to block any commissioner. Five years ago you know what happened in the case of Mrs. Rovana Plumb and, as a result of what happened then, those who decided in the previous European Parliament changed the rules and limited our possibility to block”, said Negrescu, who is a member of the JURI Committee.

„The only thing we can do is to send certain observations to the competent committee, and the competent committee, during the hearings, will make the decision, which is well coordinated from a political point of view, and there is still this agreement between the main European political families to support the European executive”, said the PSD MEP.

The JURI Committee is tasked with examining the potential conflict of interest of the candidates. The result of the procedure will be communicated after JURI concludes the procedure for all candidates. The conference of presidents (responsible for establishing the competences and composition of commissions and delegations) asked JURI members to complete the procedure by October 18, 2024.

AGERPRES