Brussels, 20/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - Although the EPP and ECR groups have announced that on Wednesday 21 November they will vote for the appointment of Tonio Borg to the post of commissioner for health and consumer policy, the Greens/EFA, ALDE and GUE/NGL have said that they will vote against. The only grey area is the position of the Socialists and Democrats Group (S&D), which is not giving an indication of how it will vote (EUROPE 10730 and 10732).
On Tuesday morning, the president of the S&D, Hannes Swoboda from Austria, declared that he could, “personally consider voting for” Borg but he was not going to give any voting instruction to MEPs in his group. He indicated that, “we are waiting for a majority vote, not by unanimity and colleagues who are perhaps of a different opinion will have the right to intervene and make their position known”. In connection with the way he himself would vote, Swoboda explained that he had “thought about it a lot”, particularly after the tragic accident that had occurred in Ireland (Ed.: doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy of a young woman when she was miscarrying because abortion is illegal in Ireland). He would ultimately vote in favour because, “Mr Borg will be subject to a system of constant surveillance… and we will be watching him very closely”. On the eve of the vote, the Greens/EFA repeated that its MEPs would vote against the appointment of Borg from Malta because of the high level of scepticism about whether the new commission-designate would be “prepared to fight for European values”. According to the co-president of the Greens/EFA, Rebecca Harms, “the European Commission could have had a Maltese commissioner who was a little less of a Catholic conservative”. Joseph Daul, the president of the EPP, considers that Borg will be, “a very good commissioner”. He underlined the fact that it was necessary to respect privacy and leave all the polemic to one side, as long as the nominee was competent in the appropriate areas of his remit. (IL/trans/fl)