Ribera hearing is a fierce clash over the victims in Valencia, jeopardizing the green light for the vice presidents of the EU executive

Brussels – After all, the whole world is a village, and the halls in Brussels, when necessary, turn into loudspeakers of national disagreements. Thus, the hearing at the European Parliament of the Spanish Socialist Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice president-designate for a clean, fair, and competitive transition, became the scene of a ferocious clash over responsibility for the tragic flooding in Valencia, which cost the lives of 222 people. The result is that now more than ever, tension within the pro-European majority is sky-high, just when it is time to approve Ursula von der Leyen’s team of vice presidents. 

The Spanish right wing, under scrutiny for how it has handled the emergency in the Valencia region – where the People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox govern together – took advantage of the face-to-face meeting with Ribera, current Minister for Ecological Transition in Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist government, to shift blame to Madrid. Spanish MEPs from the European People’s Party and the sovereignist group Patriots for Europe accused Ribera of “hiding out” in Brussels, saying she “should not be part of the college of commissioners but should instead “be sitting in court,” awaiting judgment for her actions. Socialist Group (S&D) Vice-President Mohammed Chahim called the “difficulty in distinguishing between the demands of the EPP and those of the Patriots” during the hearing “worrying.”

Ribera distanced herself from the accusations, recalling that Spain’s strongly regionalist system stipulates that, yes, it is the central government that issues the weather alert and sends the required means to the regions. However, it was up to the region to “send out the alert to the population” and put in place “measures to protect it.” The minister reconstructed the tragic day of October 29, claiming that “the alert from the central government came on time, at 7:30 in the morning.” To the criticism raised by Forza Italia’s head of delegation, Fulvio Martusciello, Ribera reiterated that “it was the alerts for the population and the protective measures that failed and that this t was not the responsibility of the national government.”

With her back to the wall for over two hours for the handling of the DANA emergency in Valencia alone – about which she will report next week to the Spanish Congress – Ribera counterattacked by saying that we need to “take the weather alert seriously” and not “discredit the Spanish Meteorological Agency.” The unedifying spectacle of the all-Spanish blame-shifting over the responsibility for the deaths in Valencia relegated any other issues to the margins of the hearing, even those directly related to the role assigned to Ribera by von der Leyen. The nominee promised a new state aid framework to support member countries “in the development of renewable energy and the decarbonization of the European economy,” firmly reiterated her attachment to EU decarbonization goals, and endorsed the principle of technology neutrality to ensure a competitive transition of the automotive sector. 

The groups had already decided to postpone the decision on Ribera in the morning after the Raffaele Fitto and  Kaja Kallas hearings. However, the coordinators of the EPP and the Conservatives of the ECR in the committees on Economic Affairs (ECON), Environment (ENVI), and Industry and Energy (ITRE) reportedly also requested to submit additional written questions to the Spanish socialist. “It was difficult before the hearing to support Teresa Ribera in the role of vice-president” for transition “and now it is even more so,” German MEP Peter Liese, the EPP coordinator on the ENVI committee, told reporters on the sidelines of Ribera’s hearing. His Socialist counterpart in ENVI, Tiemo Wolken, called the proposal to ask additional questions to the Spanish candidate “ridiculous” and politically motivated only because “the EPP has joined the Spanish Populars” in a domestic controversy.

 The choice of the EPP to lend itself to the attack against the Socialist executive vice-president enraged the S&D group, jeopardizing the resilience of the pro-European majority, which is based precisely on the alliance of the two primary political families in the European Parliament. “The EPP’s leadership has broken the political agreement of the pro-European democratic forces in the European Parliament for the sake of a destructive Spanish Partido Popular agenda,” said the S&D group in a statement published today. According to the European Social Democrats, led by Spanish Socialist Iratxe Garcia Perez, the Spanish PP “has effectively taken the EPP hostage, pushing the entire European Union to the brink in the most irresponsible way.” 

The Spanish PP is reportedly pushing to postpone the decision on Ribera until after her speech to the Madrid Congress on Nov. 20. However, this date seemed too close to the Nov. 21 deadline, when the Conference of Presidents should close the process of hearings of commissioners-designate. In the meantime, von der Leyen is trying to put a patch to prevent the majority on which her executive depends from unraveling: the group leaders of the EPP, S&D, Liberals, and Greens are expected to meet today at the Berlaymont Palace, the headquarters of the European Commission.