Lawmakers vet EU chief’s new team

Brussels: Five months after the European Union lurched to the political right, the influence of nationalist and populist parties will go on public display in Brussels on Monday when lawmakers vet the proposed new members of the EU’s increasingly powerful executive branch.

Over five days of hearings, the EU parliamentarians will grill 26 top officials — nominated by their national governments — to establish whether they are suitable to lead the next European Commission on policies like agriculture, trade, economic affairs, health or migration.

The commission is the only EU body with the power to draft laws which, once passed by the Parliament and the council of member states, apply in all 27 countries of the bloc. They cover everything from water quality to data protection to competition policy.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen assembled her new-look executive in September, seeking to balance sensitive political, geographical and gender concerns within a team that will lead the European project for the next five years. The vast majority of the would-be commissioners come from the right of the political spectrum, mostly the European People’s Party (EPP), a conservative EU-wide political family that counts von der Leyen as a member and is the biggest in the parliament.

Despite that advantage, the EPP has already worked with hard-right groups — including Italian Premier Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, which has neo-fascist roots, and stridently nationalist lawmakers from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz — to secure majorities in the EU Parliament.