The hearings in the European Parliament for three candidates for the new European Commission can proceed today as planned. The parliament's legal committee ruled on Tuesday that there is no conflict of interest with the three, allowing them to be interrogated orally.
Before the European Parliament votes on the new European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen at the end of this month, parliamentary committees are first assessing the suitability of the candidate commissioners.
Frenchman Thierry Breton, Romanian Adina Vălean, and Hungarian Oliver Várhelyi will each be questioned for three hours on Thursday to evaluate their suitability for the roles that their future chief Ursula von der Leyen has assigned to them. She envisions the portfolios of Internal Market, Transport, and Enlargement respectively for them.
Breton, until recently the CEO of the IT company Atos, sold off a substantial share package before taking on his new role. The legal committee gave him the green light with a narrow majority of one vote.
The parliament rejected previous candidates from these three EU countries, which caused delays in the start of the new commission. Von der Leyen now wants to begin on December 1. The names of 27 team members are known. The nomination of a British commissioner is still awaited.
Some political groups express dissatisfaction with the legal committee's previous hard stance. Critics point out that the committee has a political character and is established to judge the legal aspects of EU actions. The committee supposedly lacks the moral standing to judge its own moral-ethical issues and behaviors of EU officials.
It is not expected that the EU Parliament committees will discover any issues during the three-hour interviews with the prospective commissioners on Thursday that would render the newcomers unsuitable.