Starting Monday 4th November and over the next eight days, the potential 26 European Commissioners (one from each European Union country, excluding the Commission chief herself) will appear in front of members of the European Parliament in a series of intense, three-hour hearings.
The detailed scheduling and committee allocation per commissioner is HERE.
These sessions offer the prospective commissioners not only an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise but also give Parliament a rare chance to influence the actions of the increasingly powerful Commission.
The first hearings begin Monday at 2:30 p.m. and the final ones will wrap up Tuesday, Nov. 12 by 9:30 p.m.
Parliamentary committees will quiz commissioners for three hours. Some have been designated as a “responsible committee,” with the power to approve or reject the candidate. Others are only an “invited committee,” issuing a nonbinding opinion.
In the first week, the 20 commissioners will undergo scrutiny, followed by the six executive vice presidents on Tuesday, Nov. 12.
One can watch the official streaming HERE once they start.
The in-person hearings are the final step in the Parliament’s lengthy vetting process. It all started at the beginning of October with the legal affairs committee scrutinizing the candidates’ financial declarations in search of conflicts of interest.
All 26 nominees were given the green light despite some concerns voiced by political groups that some had left their conflicts-of-interest forms mostly empty.
Those declarations are available to peruse HERE.
Some lawmakers have argued the scrutiny process should be reformed.
The candidates also sent in written responses to the Parliament’s preliminary questions, which lawmakers used to prepare for the in-person questioning.
Check out the would-be commissioners’ answers HERE.
How will the hearings work?
The Parliament has divided up the 180 available minutes for each nominee’s hearing among various political factions based on the size of the respective group.
In the first round, groups must distribute their allocated time in five-minute time slots among their own MEPs.
Each slot is then broken down into one minute for a question from an MEP, followed by a two-minute slot allocated for a response from the nominee, a one-minute follow-up question from the same MEP, and finally, a one-minute response slot.
In the second round, groups will allocate three-minute slots to their members, which must include one minute for the MEP’s question and two minutes for the nominee’s response.
A similar structure will be applied to the chairs of the committees invited to give an opinion. Their assessments will not be binding for the final evaluation.
Within one hour after a hearing ends, a confidential “evaluation meeting” among lawmakers will take place to decide whether to approve or reject a candidate. They will have 24 hours to decide.
The discussion will be among the whips from each political group from the responsible committees, plus the chairs of the invited committees. No parliamentary assistants (APAs) are allowed.
Following the discussion, coordinators will vote in favor or against the commissioner, with a decision requiring a two-thirds majority. Each whip’s vote is weighted differently according to their group’s size.
Reaching a two-thirds majority could be complicated: In many committees, reaching two-thirds will require votes in favor from Greens, Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberals of Renew Europe, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
f the lawmakers cannot reach a two-thirds majority to approve or reject a candidate in the first round, they can send additional questions or summon the nominee. Political group leaders will need to green-light any extra sessions.
The process remains confidential until all 26 hearings are over.
Read more via Politico
