Although she has repeatedly acknowledged her lack of knowledge about certain aspects of the transport sector, the European Commissioner-designate for Transport, Adina-Ioana Vălean, received the green light from the European Parliament on Thursday 14 November, following her hearing before the members of Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN).
With the exception of the Greens/EFA and ID groups, all the coordinators of the other groups reportedly supported her candidacy.
“Today’s hearing showed that Adina-Ioana Vălean is the right person for the job. She is pro-European, committed and fulfils all the criteria of an excellent Commissioner”, said Romanian MEP Marian-Jean Marinescu (EPP), a member of the same political group as the candidate.
With this future Commissioner, the S&D group considers that the President-elect, Ursula von der Leyen, will now have to face the accusation that she has acted with bias, since she too belongs to the EPP group. According to the Social Democrats, while the Romanian government proposed several candidates to Mrs von der Leyen, it nevertheless took her weeks to nominate a Romanian candidate as she speculated on the fall of the socialist government in Bucharest (an event that finally took place).
“We have confidence in the Commissioner-designate. [...] She was convincing despite the fact that she is still on a learning curve in the transport sector. I believe in her potential and I am looking forward to working with her”, said José Ramón Bauzá Díaz (Spain), on behalf of the Renew Europe group.
The Greens/EFA group regretted that Mrs Vălean had not made a greater commitment to “adequate proposals on the transport sector's contribution to reducing the EU’s CO2 emissions by 55% by 2030”, including the taxation of kerosene and the application of VAT to the aviation sector.
“I have duly noted the confirmation of Commissioner Vălean, who must now prove herself, particularly in the fight against climate change”, said Karima Delli (Greens/EFA, France), chairwoman of the TRAN Committee.
On the GUE/NGL side, even though the group voted in favour of the Romanian, serious reservations remain. In fact, the group reportedly supported her candidacy only because it did not believe that the Romanian government could propose a better candidate.
Transport as a central element of the Green Deal.
With regard to the contents of her hearing, the Romanian candidate remained generally faithful to the written answers she had provided to parliamentarians (see EUROPE 12368/3).
In her introductory speech, she thus stressed the need to follow an “integrated approach” rather than a modular approach in the implementation of the ‘Green Deal’, in particular through close cooperation between the various Commissioners.
Mrs Vălean also reiterated her commitment to making transport a central element of the European ‘Green Deal’ promoted by Ursula von der Leyen, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from this sector by around 90% by 2050, a condition for achieving the European objective of climate neutrality.
“I will present by the end of the year, if elected, a strategy on sustainable and smart mobility”, she pledged.
However, she also stressed that this decarbonisation of transport should not be at the expense of people, particularly the most isolated.
To this end, she stressed the importance of strengthening multimodality in transport, i.e. intelligently combining different types of transport with rail, which is “at the centre of a sustainable transport”.
“We have to favour investment in rail and we have to invest in multimodality”, she replied to Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg (Greens/EFA, Germany), who asked her how she would ensure a fair competitive balance between the different modes of transport.
In addition, the Commissioner-designate said she would work to improve road safety and to encourage the adoption of clean vehicles and the deployment of publicly accessible electric vehicle charging points.
On transport investments, she assured MEP Dominique Riquet (Renew Europe, France) that she would defend the current budget of the Connecting European Facility (CEF) for the next multiannual financial framework. She also stressed the importance of raising funding from other European funding sources such as the Cohesion Fund, Horizon Europe and InvestEU.
Achieving the Single European Sky.
As in her replies to the written questions, she expressed her wish to achieve the ‘Single European Sky’ (SES) in order to reduce aircraft journeys and, consequently, to reduce CO2 emissions by 10%.
Following the example of Ciarán Cuffe (Greens/EFA, Ireland), several MEPs criticised this approach.
The Greens MEP said that this could free up space for more aircraft to fly, which would lead to increased emissions. He then suggested to the Commissioner-designate that it might be more appropriate to seek to reduce the number of flights in favour of more sustainable modes of transport, an idea that Mrs Vălean does not share.
“ I am encouraging the competitiveness of our industries and the movement of goods and of people. I could not go in the direction of saying that we need less flights, but we need to be more efficient, more sustainable and have a more efficient system on traffic management”, she replied.
Taxation of kerosene.
The taxation of kerosene was one of the main points on which the candidate’s answers did not seem to convince some MEPs.
Clare Daly (GUE/NGL, Ireland) criticised her for not clearly committing herself to an aviation tax, whereas this measure, according to a Commission study, “would reduce emissions without affecting jobs”.
Mrs Vălean replied that she thought taxation was only part of the solution. “If you want, I can commit and say that I will not exclude taxation [from the solution] ”, she continued.
Finally, as a closing speech, the Romanian acknowledged that she may not always have provided as concrete and precise answers as expected, due to her lack of expertise in some aspects of the transport sector. However, she assured MEPs that she would remedy this as soon as possible.
The vote in the plenary session of the European Parliament on the entire college of Commissioners is scheduled for 27 November in Strasbourg. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)