President of the Socialist and Democrats Group Gianni Pittella
announced that they support the candidacy of Slovenian MEP Tanja Fajon
to replace Alenka Bratušek as a vice-president in Jean-Claude Juncker’s
commission.
Speaking for the S&D party on Thursday, Pittella said he endorses
Fajon as a candidate for the vice-president of the Juncker Commission
in charge of the energy union portfolio in place of the rejected Alenka
Bratušek, and cited her experience in the energy sector as an MEP as one
of the main reasons for his support. Fajon, who is a member of the
S&D party, has been an MEP since 2009.
Pittella said the party had settled on three Slovenian candidates to
replace Bratušek, who resigned from her nomination Thursday afternoon,
but chose to primarily endorse Fajon because she would help the
commission to meet the minimum required female commissioners in order to
be approved by the Parliament. But he also said that Fajon is qualified
for the position.
“The reason why we think Mrs. Fajon would be a good idea is because
she was on the list from the Slovenian government initially,” Pittella
said. “She was a very popular in the parliament because of her
competencies and her skills. We are very confident that she will not be
rejected.”
Pittella announced the S&D’s endorsement of Fajon shortly after
the European People’s Party announced that it would support Fajon to
replace Bratušek as well. The coalition of the parliament’s two biggest
parties all but assures that Fajon will be approved in Juncker’s
commission.
Pittella and vice chair of the S&D party Enrique Guerrero Salom
also gave spoke on behalf of the party’s official review of the
commission hearing process. Salom said that the party believes it has
made great progress towards its goals for the hearings.
“There were two main objectives,” Salom said. “First, to contribute
to consolidating our position vis a vis the change in the EU’s economic
policies and growth policies. Secondly, we wanted to do this in such a
way that we could be useful in a short amount of time. The MEPs need to
be working on their posts at the beginning of November.”
“We’ve been rigorous in all of that,” Salom continued. “We’ve tried
to assess the candidates appropriately. At the same time we wanted to
make a contribution on the final result.”
Pittella also spoke on the hearing of Miguel Canete, who was accepted
into the commission despite some controversy surrounding his financial
interests and various other conflicts of interest. Pittella said that he
feels the issues that many people felt towards Canete’s appointment
were mitigated by the results of his hearing.
“Mr. Canete did not show he was not competent,” Pittella said. “I
didn’t say there weren’t concerns. I said that we got responses to our
concerns. We’ve got a VP who’s from our political family and this person
has a monitoring role over sustainable development so he will be able
to monitor commissioners in that area. We acted in such a way to reduce
the potential impact of the appointment, so I think we acted to answer
the concerns of the people.”
Pittella said that despite the fact that the new nomination still
must be vetted by parliament, he feels the commission will be approved
in time to begin work on November 1st.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/sd-endorses-fajon-replace-bratu%C5%A1ek