Brussels, 15/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - The former Irish Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, is to be the next European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development. Initially, he will be in charge of the measures in favour of EU producers hit by the Russian embargo.
If he gets through the hearing before the committee on agriculture of the European Parliament all right, and if Jean-Claude Juncker's team is approved by the members of the European Parliament at the plenary session to be held in Strasbourg from 20 to 23 October, Phil Hogan, 54, who was appointed Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in March 2011, will be the second Irishman to hold the position of Agriculture Commissioner. Ray MacSharry held the post between 1989 and 1992 and it was he who initiated the first major reform of the common agriculture policy (CAP), which bears his name.
In a statement published on 10 September, Phil Hogan said that securing the “major economic portfolio” of agriculture “reflects the Taoiseach's relationship with the incoming Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker”. “The Taoiseach has prioritised agriculture and rural development from the start and helped enormously in securing this portfolio”, he added.
Phil Hogan, who comes from a dairy production area of Ireland, has a long national career behind him. At the age of 25, he became the youngest chairman of a county council, that of Kilkenny.
A staunch supporter of Taoiseach Enda Kenny (Fine Gael, centre right), Phil Hogan was responsible for the introduction of unpopular taxes on water and real estate and for a broad-ranging reform of local governance, during his time as Environment Minister.
He was recently caught up in a scandal over consultancy fees paid out by the company Irish Water, reported in the Irish press to run to millions of euros, but he initially denied any knowledge of the amount. In 2011, Phil Hogan was forced to write a letter of apology to a female adviser to the former head of government, John Bruton, following a comment with sexual connotations.
As he has done for each Commissioner, Jean-Claude Juncker has sent Phil Hogan a “mission letter”, stating that he will be contributing to projects managed by the vice-president with responsibility for employment, growth, investment and competitiveness, Finland's Jyrki Katainen, and by the vice-president with responsibility for the energy union, Alenka Bratusek of Slovenia.
In his letter to Phil Hogan, Juncker also lists the dossiers on which he will have to “concentrate”, mainly the implementation of the reform of the CAP and simplification of its instruments, agriculture's contribution to the fight against climate change and the revision, in 2016, of the multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020 of the EU. Peter Power, former spokesperson to the UK's Peter Mandelson during his time as Trade Commissioner from 2004 to 2008, and more recently responsible for communication to the Commission's Representation in Dublin, is expected to become Phil Hogan's head of cabinet. Dermot Ryan, Ireland's representative to the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) of the Council of the EU, is also to join the cabinet.
In Juncker's team, the health and food safety portfolio has gone to Lithuania's Vytenis Andriukaitis, former surgeon and Minister for Health. According to the mission letter he has received, he will be responsible for “revising, within the first six months of the mandate, the current decision-making process applied to genetically-modified organisms, in line with the political directives”. (LC)