A pro-European committed speech did not earn Raffaele Fitto the approval from the Parliament

The deputies of the Regional Development Committee in the European Parliament reserved judgment on the European Commissioner Vice-president Raffaele Fitto after questioning him for three hours. Fitto stood the test, as confirmed by S&D—and Renew-affiliated members of the Parliament. They partially brushed past the skepticism raised around Fitto that led them to blame Ursula von der Leyen for offering the post of vice president to a member of ECR. The Conservatives and Reformists are not part of the majority that greenlighted von der Leyen’s second mandate.

The S&D and Renew groups decided later to veto Fitto’s approval, given the European People’s Party’s lack of guarantees on supporting Teresa Ribera, the executive vice president-designate for Clean Transition. Nevertheless, no stir was raised during the exchange with the commissioner designate.

“Five years ago, I was sitting among you; I remember my political journey, from local to national in Brussels: I have always worked for a stronger Europe,” Fitto told the members of the Parliament during his introductory remarks. In the early stages of his speech, Fitto said to sit there with no intentions to “represent a political party or a Member State, but because of my commitment to Europe”. He said that if confirmed, he “will work with the Commissioner for the Economy to enable the Member States to realize the planned reforms and investments under the Next Generation EU plan by 2026”.

He committed to keeping the Cohesion policy central in the next Multiannual Financial Framework and adequately funding it. “It needs to be better aligned with EU priorities while maintaining its core principles of place-based approach, multi-level governance, and partnership,” he further stressed.
On aligning the von der Leyen working program related to climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, Fitto said, “the final goals are certain objectives to be ensured, for which I have no difficulty in confirming my position.”

“But it is clear that in the course of implementation, there may be situations for which we may have to adapt to new scenarios because rigidity gets us nowhere,” he highlighted. He defined flexibility as a central theme. “So I agree with the President’s guidelines, and I am committed to implementing them without any difficulty, ” he further said.

In the view of the Italian Partito democratico, there is a problem with the political set-up of the next European Commission. This was stated by the MEP of the Democratic Party, Dario Nardella, in a meeting with the press at the European Parliament in Brussels. “The judgment we give of the von der Leyen Commission is chiaroscuro. Compared to the premises we had with the vote in mid-July last year, the result of this Commission is a powerful and clear shift to conservative positions, conditioned by national parties that tend to be anti-European and nationalist”, journalists were told.

The co-president of the Greens heavily criticized Fitto for “not upholding European values and not having the interests of the European Union and its citizens at heart. “This makes him unfit to represent the Commission in a role as important as that of executive vice-president,” he stressed.