Majority rebus for von der Leyen bis. Nardella: “We hope it will be large”

Brussels – Who and how? The new European Commission must go through the answers to these questions that cloak and agitate the vote of confidence for the College of Commissioners and the von der Leyen bis. The European Parliament will decide the fate of the new EU legislature on Wednesday (Nov. 27) for a plenary session that, barring any last-minute surprises, should allow the new EU executive to take office on Dec. 1. But the Patriots group announces a vote against, the Greens will not lift the reservation until Monday (Nov. 25), and in the ranks of the socialists, French (13 seats) and Dutch (4) could back out.

“We hope that the Commission will get a large majority. Otherwise, we play into the hands of patriots and nationalists,” acknowledges Dario Nardella (PD/S&D), a member of the Agriculture Committee. A wish that carries with it no small political significance. A majority is always a majority, as the outgoing and incoming chairwoman of the EU Commission said in unsuspected times. Still, a slim go-ahead would certainly offer the image of a shaky commission, a divided and quarrelsome Europe.

An image, the latter, that could also affect Italy and its government. With the Democratic Party ready to support the entire constituency, including Raffaele Fitto as executive vice-president responsible for Cohesion and Reforms, there is the question of the Lega. The group to which the Lega belongs, as the spokesman for Patriots for Europe lets it be known, will vote “no.” “They told us that if we did not support Fitto, we would be anti-Italian. I wonder how the government will regard the Lega,” is Nardella’s tirade.

In hoping for a large majority, the PD member, on the one hand, asks socialists to close ranks and, on the other hand, European greens to act as a counterweight to right-wingers. “I hope that the EPP will vote in favour, just as I hope that socialist delegations from France and the Netherlands will vote in support of the College of Commissioners”. While outside the arc of the political Socialists-Populars-Liberals pact, “we want, however, to remain close to the friends of the Greens.”

However, Ignazio Marino, on behalf of his delegation, offers a glimpse of the climate among the Greens. “I and the Greens are not satisfied with this Commission,” he acknowledges. He specifically criticizes a shift in orientation. After the European elections in June, “we had voted for a centre-left “Ursula majority,” now I fear the majority is centre-right.” A clear reference to the blitz attempted by Von der Leyen’s EPP with deforestation regulation, which has seen an alliance with conservatives (ECR) and sovereignists (PfE) in an anti-Green Deal vein. The Greens do not trust the new European Commission and are moving toward a no-confidence vote.

The EPP and its Italian delegation, that of Forza Italia, will vote in favour. So assures Flavio Tosi, who, on the one hand, hails the Popular-Socialist-Liberal political understanding because, he says, “it was essential to have an agreement,” on the other hand, he has clear ideas for the continuation of the legislature: “I hope for a shift to the right” of the EPP.

A sharp “no” from the La Sinistra group is anticipated Gaetano Pedullà (M5S). “There is a clear shift to the right, and Tosi confirms that the EPP is looking to the right, which is unacceptable,” thunders the 5 Star MEP. “We are voting against this Commission.”

From the ranks of the ECR, Fratelli d’Italia stands by and watches. The yes vote is clearly for Fitto, as indicated by Council President Meloni. Carlo Fidanza knows that his party got everything it wanted: an executive vice presidency role for a party member. The rest are skirmishes that are being watched carefully by the conservatives. “There is no enlargement to the ECR of the majority,” and moreover, he points out, “We never asked to be part of the majority.” What is certain is that “the agreement is fragile,” he stresses in reference to the EPP-S&D-Re pact. The vote on the constituency is effectively a test of the alliance.

“Next Wednesday, the Commission will pass, it will definitely pass,” assures outgoing Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni, intervening on Un Giorno da Pecora, on Rai Radio1. He also gets off the hook on another issue, that of numbers. “I understand that there may be some doubts; however, I think von der Leyen will have a fairly comfortable majority,” thanks in part to the contribution of the home party. “I think the PD does well in voting for Fitto.”