A senior EPP lawmaker famous how a lot success the Greens and The Left teams had in eliciting concessions from Hoekstra throughout his affirmation hearings final 12 months.
“They made him commit [to] the neutrality targets by threatening to vote him down,” the lawmaker mentioned. “That’s what you will note in hearings, from us, however different teams, too.”
The third, nuclear choice is to hold out the risk — however that is seen as extremely unlikely, on condition that Ribera is the Socialist group’s most senior candidate, hails from a significant EU economic system and, crucially, is certainly one of solely 10 girls (along with von der Leyen) put ahead by the 27 EU international locations.
Furthermore, it may set off a sequence response.
“[The] EPP just isn’t within the temper to kill commissioners,” the senior EPP lawmaker mentioned. “All political teams will begin taking pictures at one another’s nominees.”
The Socialists are additionally not pleased with the slate of proposed EU commissioners. The EPP controls 13 out of 27 posts, vastly outnumbering the Socialists’ 4.
Key Socialist figures have warned that the one approach to safe their help for the association is for the EPP to provide concessions on posts, portfolios or commitments.
“If the EPP makes a fuss about Ribera, not to mention tries to kill the socialist heavyweight of the Fee within the hearings, then the Socialists will retaliate in opposition to VDL,” mentioned an EU official with data of the interior discussions within the Fee. “Everybody is aware of that. So Ribera will go.”