An encouraging success. The new Member States have got through an extra phase of their integration into the Community institutions. In their hearings before the committees of the European Parliament, the Commissioners from the countries of central and eastern Europe, Cyprus and Malta were all "unanimously accepted", and this result will doubtless be confirmed in Strasbourg by the plenary on 5 May. I am fully aware that the candidates left Mr Swoboda with "an image of low-profile technocrats", and that the conclusions of several of the committees contain reservations and criticisms. But a few shifts in mood and development are normal and unavoidable. Furthermore, the reservations listed in the minutes of the hearings refer almost exclusively to technical issues, such as the candidate's knowledge of the specific field he or she will be looking after in the months to come (I also feel that they are not all terribly excited about the roles assigned to them by the President of the Commission, using criteria which are neither obvious nor transparent).
The real meaning. The main thrust lies elsewhere. The hearings' objective was not to look in detail at the new Commissioners' technical understanding of dossiers which, without exception, they will only be in charge of for a couple of months, but to examine their general attitude towards the Union and their ideas about the Commission's role from a triple point of view: the independence of the institution, individual autonomy from the country of origin, defence of general European interests over national ones. The MEPs who turned the hearing into a kind of promotion examination were barking up the wrong tree. According to Joseph Daul, the chair of the Conference of the Presidents of the EP Committees, those Commissioners who admitted that they had much to learn about the dossiers they would be jointly responsible for will not be the worst, when the time comes (he also wondered aloud which MEPs would have been able to answer some of the questions, on regulating chemicals, for example). The Slovenian Janez Potocnik was quite correct in that "it's not the portfolio that's all important, but the fact of sitting around the Commission table and taking part in discussions on all subjects" (see our bulletin of 15 April, p.8).
Unreasonable emphasis. I felt that the emphasis placed by some of the panellists on the "communist" past of some or other of the candidates was quite unreasonable. When you're twenty years old in a dictatorship, you can't so much as complete your studies or contemplate a career as a teacher if you're not a member of the "single party": aside from specific individual responsibilities, it is petty rather than useful to bring up past episodes from several of our countries. There were even attempts to drag internal quarrels of some or other of the candidate countries into the hearings. Danuta Hübner rightly spoke openly of her remorse (see our bulletin of 15 April, p.10). Eurosceptics from the candidate countries have every right to express their views, clearly, but they cannot claim that a Commissioner is only concerned by the interests of the country of origin.
A priority. Candidates who negotiated their country's accession or those such as Peter Balazs, who currently sit on the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU, have a clear advantage in their knowledge of the Union's ins and outs, and already have clear personal links, but almost all had regular contact with the Union in their former national roles as, variously, Foreign or Finance Ministers, Prime Ministers or governors of their country's central bank. Many of the new Commissioners feel that their main job is to make their citizens more aware of the reality and objectives of the European Union, because their knowledge is often wrong or confused. This leads me to conclude that in this at least, the new Member States are in a situation which is not a million miles removed from that of the old ones.
New enthusiasm? Concluding, Joseph Daul commented that: a) several "examiners" were stricter than others, hence their criticism (see our bulletin of 17 April), but that no group upheld its reservations on any of the candidates; b) the hearings showed the candidates' personality and basic beliefs. The findings, according to Mr Daul, are that they are all sincerely pro-European and that their presence could give a "new enthusiasm and impetus to Europe"; c) those to remain in the next Commission will be heard again by the Parliament to be elected in June. The feeling is that they are all candidates for this. Their initial experience in the Prodi Commission will stand them in good stead. (F.R.)