MEPs to reject Alenka Bratušek
The European Parliament’s energy and environment committees plan to reject Bratušek and confirm Cañete. Here are three possibilities for what happens next.
Alenka Bratušek, the Slovenian nominee to be the next European Commission vice-president for energy union, will be rejected in a vote in Wednesday by the European Parliament’s environment and energy committees.
According to sources, group co-ordinators will formally take the decision tonight after working out a deal to put both Bratušek and Miguel Arias Cañete, the Spanish nominee to be European commissioner for climate and energy, up for a vote at the same time. Cañete has been blocked because of concerns over his ties to the oil industry. The centre-left S&D group will drop its objection to Cañete in exchange for the centre-right EPP group going along with the vote to reject Bratušek.
Once Cañete is safe, the EPP will vote to approve Pierre Moscovici, the centre-left French nominee who has been blocked because of concerns over his commitment to austerity, according to the plan.
Bratušek is from the liberal ALDE group, but the EPP still needed convincing to reject her even after a disastrous performance yesterday because the group did not want to see any adjustments to Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposed Commission college. Mostly, the Bratušek rejection is being used as an occasion to settle the Cañete-Moscovici stand-off between the EPP and S&D, according to sources.
UK nominee Jonathan Hill, who had been held over concerns about his lack of knowledge of European Union policy, will be waved through tomorrow following a second round of questioning today. Véra Jourová, the Czech nominee who saw confirmation withheld last week over her vague answers, was waved through today.
Who will replace Bratušek? That is the million-dollar question. There are three possible scenarios:
1) Bratušek is replaced by Tanja Fajon, a centre-left MEP. Fajon does not have enough experience to be a vice-president, so she becomes commissioner for transport. Maroš Šefčovič, the commissioner from Slovakia who was given the transport portfolio, becomes vice-president for energy union.
2) Bratušek is replaced by Tanja Fajon. Fajon is given the education, culture, youth and citizenship portfolio from Hungarian nominee Tibor Navracsics (the culture committee voted yesterday that Navracsics cannot have citizenship in his portfolio because of Hungary’s human rights abuses). Navracsics gets transport, and Šefčovič gets energy union.
3) Bratušek is replaced by Janez Potočnik, the current Slovenian commissioner (for the environment). Potočnik keeps the vice-president for energy union position for Slovenia. Navracsics has only citizenship take out of his portfolio, given to Dimitris Avramopoulos the Greek commissioner for migration and home affairs.
This last option is a long-shot. Potočnik is thought to be the only available person from Slovenia who has the clout to take on the vice-presidency role. But energy companies and industry would be very nervous about him getting the position. Potočnik is probably considered too green-friendly for Juncker. He has had a habit of putting forward environmentally ambitious proposals which later had to be killed or scaled down by the Commission’s services. Given that the role of these new vice-presidents is to guard against excessive regulation, Potočnik might not be a good fit.
A spokesperson for Potočnik told European Voice, “Janez has always said he was prepared to do a third mandate.”
Both Fajon and Potočnik are lobbying for this role. The new Slovenian prime minister Miro Cerar, supported Potocnik for a third term after he won the Slovenian election in May. But Potočnik took himself off the list of four possibilities put forward by Bratušek in July, saying it was a sham.
In any event, new confirmation hearings will have to be held. According to Parliament sources, the aim is to keep the final confirmation vote on 22 October in Strasbourg and quickly hold the two new hearings next week.