Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2015-09-07-Speech-1-315-000"
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"en.20150907.23.1-315-000"2
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"Mr President, sometimes what we do here is an example that national parliaments might consider emulating – just sometimes – and, in my view, the process we have of holding public hearings of candidates for the Commission, before we take our vote of confidence on the Commission as a whole, is an example that they might consider. Just imagine how it would be if, when a government takes office in a national parliament, each minister, before taking office, had to go for a three-hour public grilling, with incisive questioning. I think it would be revealing.
We do it here, and it is to our credit, but what we do can always be improved, and my report has been about looking at how we operate this system and making a number of suggestions for improvement. Let me highlight just three.
The first is about the questioning – the incisive nature of the questions. We had at the last hearings, I think, 42 questions by individual Members to Commissioners and 42 answers. I propose that we cut that number to about 25, but allow each questioner to come back with a follow-up question. That would be more incisive: it would permit a real to and fro. The purpose of the hearings is not to give the floor to a maximum number of Members: the purpose is to get precise information and answers out of the candidate Commissioners.
The second proposal to improve things is to look at how we evaluate the Commissioners after the hearings. At the moment, the coordinators from each Group have a meeting, but our rules are not very clear on this. Indeed, our rules as they currently read could require a vote in every single committee, on every single Commissioner, at the request of just one Political Group. I do not think that is wise because formally, legally, the only vote that matters is the vote by Parliament as a whole on the Commission as a whole. The vote by individual committees on individual Commissioners has no legal consequence. Therefore, we have to make sure it has political consequences and carries weight. In other words, a vote should be taken on a Commissioner only in a case of genuine doubt, and not as a matter of routine. Then, if as we have seen in the past there is a negative verdict, it will have consequences. That is how I think we should proceed, and my report proposes to clarify the procedures in that regard.
A final point I would mention is the question of gender balance in the Commission. This Parliament has always attached importance to improving the gender imbalance that has existed up to now, but of course we are tied by the nominations that come from national governments if they all nominate just one candidate. Last time, however, there was at least one country which nominated two and allowed the President of the Commission to choose. Why do we not institutionalise that and propose – as a parliament we can only propose in this case – that each country’s government nominates two candidate Commissioners at least, one of each gender, two people in whom the national government has full confidence? The Commission President would then be in a better position to get gender balance in the team as a whole, and that would go some way to improving the balance.
There are some other suggestions in this report, but those are three worth highlighting. I urge colleagues to read the other suggestions as well because they all would improve the situation."@en1
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