How hard-right ECR became the commissioner nominees’ best friend

BRUSSELS — I scratch your back, you scratch mine.

That’s the strategy of the European Parliament’s right wingers as lawmakers prepare to vote on six of Brussels’ highest ranking officials.

As the grand finale of the commissioner hearings approaches, the first 20 sessions have been much smoother than in previous years. That’s in large part because the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists, led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Poland’s Law and Justice party, have decided play ball by helping the other factions out — in hopes of a smooth run for their pick, Raffaele Fitto.

The ECR group in the Parliament has backed 19 out of 20 commissioner nominees in last week’s hearings. The only nominee the group didn’t fully endorse was Belgium’s Hadja Lahbib, who passed anyway.

Because of the mathematics of Parliament majorities, other political groups have required the support of the ECR to get their own commissioner candidates through. The same applies to the six executive vice presidents whose hearings are on Tuesday.

This has paved the way for an informal truce among political families. Few want to disrupt a rival political family’s progress for fear of retaliation.

An ECR official told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook it shows their group is now part of the “operational majority” in Parliament. “Without the ECR there was no two-thirds majority” for any commissioner, the official stated.

Two ECR staffers said the constructive approach is also part of a diplomatic strategy to minimize obstacles for the only nominee who hails from the ECR’s political family: Italy’s controversial pick, Fitto. The Italian has been nominated for the cohesion and reform portfolio.

The ECR isn’t shouting about this strategy from the rooftops. The group hasn’t published anything about how it’s been voting on commissioners, and a spokesperson didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Bar a hiccup for Hungary’s commissioner nominee Olivér Várhelyi, the typically politically fraught process has been bloodless so far, and the lion’s share of the 26 nominees (one from each European Union country save for Germany which nominated the institution’s president) passing easily, even if with poor performances.

ECR lawmakers even backed Poland’s Piotr Serafin, despite him having been nominated by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk — a top nemesis of the ECR’s main national delegation.

Few expected ECR to play ball to such a degree — especially since so many of the commissioners hail from rival political families.

The Socialists’ candidates are Spain’s Teresa Ribera, who is aiming for the top competition and climate job, and Roxana Mînzatu, who will oversee social policies; the liberals’ candidates are the next EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, nominated by Estonia, and internal market czar Stéphane Séjourné, nominated by France. And the center-right Finn Henna Virkkunen is angling for the role of tech supremo.

But not all of the Parliament’s factions are responding favorably to ECR’s attempts to play nice.

Some in the Social Democrats (S&D), Renew and the Greens want Fitto demoted from the role of executive vice president to a so-called “regular” commissioner, meaning he would have less power and no commissioners reporting to him in the next College.

They argue that letting ECR into the Commission’s leadership is a breach of the cordon sanitaire and does not respect the coalition who voted for von der Leyen — which did not include Meloni’s group.

In the outgoing European Commission, Poland’s commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski was nominated by an ECR government, however he was a much less powerful commissioner than Fitto promises to be. The number of vice presidents of the European Parliament from the ECR has doubled to two after June’s European election, which saw a power reshuffle of the Parliament’s 720 Members of the European Parliament.

Meanwhile, the French S&D delegation has gone as far as to threaten voting against the Commission as a whole in November’s plenary session if Fitto maintains his title and responsibilities.