Hearings raise questions of credibility

MEPs failed to ask the questions that really matter.

What we have learnt from the confirmation hearings for the European commissioners is what we learn every five years: that collectively MEPs are not very good at asking questions.

To be fair to the MEPs, the cards were stacked against them this time round. More even than in the past, the preparation time between the announcement of which commissioners would be allocated which portfolios and the start of the hearings has been compressed. A redistribution of tasks between commissioners and an overhaul of Commission departments has exacerbated the shortage of time, making it more difficult for MEPs to get to grips with commissioners’ future responsibilities and hold them to account.

Nevertheless, even making allowances for the shortage of preparation time, the hearings so far have not been a great advertisement for the Parliament’s powers of scrutiny. The questions are a hotch-potch. In too many cases, MEPs are simply looking to score cheap political points, or to promote themselves, or both. Not often enough, MEPs are asking commissioners to explain themselves and their thinking. Too often, MEPs fail to ask candidates basic questions – and follow-up questions – about what their experience and qualifications are for the designated portfolio and what their approach will be in the future.

It is hardly surprising then that the hearings have not so far shaken the position of individual candidates. A reasonably able and well-briefed politician will be able to cope with most questions, particularly if the MEPs asking them are acting individually and not collectively.

That said, what the hearings are bringing out – though perhaps more by accident than by design – is that Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, has created problems for himself through his choice of which commissioners from which member states should look after which portfolios. When the distribution of portfolios was announced, it looked audacious. A few weeks on, it looks foolhardy, or even foolish. Juncker said at the time that “those who should know best the problems of certain countries come from those countries”.

But there is more to a commissioner’s suitability for a portfolio than simply familiarity with its controversies. There is a perversity bordering on recklessness in Juncker’s choices. As successive hearings question the wisdom of giving the environment portfolio (including biodiversity) to the Maltese commissioner, migration to the Greek commissioner, the regional policy dossier to the commissioner from Romania, the capital markets union to someone from the UK, economic and financial affairs to the commissioner from France (in breach once again of its budget deficit targets), the impression accumulates that the next Commission will have a credibility problem.

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It is all very well (and legally correct) to say that a European commissioner acts on behalf of all 28 member states and not just the one from which he or she was nominated. But it cannot be denied that Europe’s citizens will ask (just as MEPs are already asking) how seriously to take lectures about biodiversity from a Maltese commissioner, or proposals to change migration policy from a Greek commissioner, or strictures for eurozone banks delivered by a British commissioner.

The next Commission will be going out to explain and promote EU policies and laws. Commissioners ought to do so from a position of strength. That is not to question the conduct of the individuals nominated. Rather, it is to ask whether Juncker is handicapping his Commission from the outset.