Popular and Social Democrats reach an agreement to unblock Ribera’s appointment

Eduardo González The three main groups in the European Parliament, Popular (EPP), Social Democrats (S&D) and Renew Europe (RE), have reached an agreement to unblock the approval of the new European Commission and, therefore, to accept the appointment as vice presidents of the Spanish Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, and the candidate from Italy, the far-right Raffaele Fitto. “It is under control,” declared the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, to the press after attending the meeting of the leaders of the parliamentary groups, with whom she agreed to hold, next week, the plenary session of the Chamber in which the new Commission chaired by Ursula von der Leyen will be voted on as a block. The leaders of the three main parliamentary groups, Manfred Weber (EPP), Iratxe García (S&D) and Valérie Hayer (RE), closed the agreement on Wednesday, which will allow the new Community Executive to come into force on December 1. To reach this agreement, the EPP must lift the veto on Teresa Ribera, promoted last week by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in protest against her management of the DANA crisis. In return, the Social Democrats will do the same with the candidate of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. According to parliamentary sources who spoke to Europa Press, the agreed text, which is just over a page long, includes the traditional coalition's commitments to the European agenda and avoids controversial issues, such as the veto of the most extreme groups in the European Parliament or controversial laws, such as the deforestation law. Finally, all the groups have endorsed this agreement, except for the Spanish PP MEPs. The objective, which was likely frustrated, of Feijóo's party was that Ribera's candidacy be submitted to a secret vote of all the MEPs of the competent committees, which would have allowed them to vote against, something that could not happen if her appointment was approved in this first phase, in which only the coordinators vote. One of the demands of the PPE in order not to veto Ribera was that she appear before the Spanish Cortes Generales (Parliament) to report on the management of the DANA, something that happened this Wednesday. In addition, another of their demands does not seem to have much effect: that Ribera resigns if she is charged by the DANA. In exchange for these concessions from the EPP, the European Social Democrats will not prevent one of the vice-presidencies from going to Meloni's candidate, Raffaele Fitto, whose powers for Cohesion and Reforms will have the rank of vice-presidency despite pressure from Iratxe García's group to keep him from being more than a commissioner. In addition, the Social Democrats and Liberals will not veto the Hungarian candidate for Health and Animal Welfare, Olivér Varhelyi, who will finally be evaluated using the same format as the vice-presidents, supported by the Prime Minister of his country, Viktor Orbán.

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