MEPs have voiced concern at some of the changes to the European Commission’s departmental structure announced by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission’s president-designate, last week. They are particularly worried about Juncker’s intention to move some
responsibilities away from the health and environment departments.
The changes include the move of policy on food waste and biocides from the environment to the health department; of medicines from the health to the merged internal market and enterprise department; and of copyright from the department for the internal market to digital agenda.
“There have been a lot of changes to the structure of the Commission,” said Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian MEP who is co-leader of the Green group. “I cannot imagine that it was Juncker’s decision alone. It was clearly the product of insider thinking, it was so precise.”
Irish Liberal MEP Marian Harkin objected to the idea of moving medicinal products and health technologies from the health to the internal market/enterprise department, which in her view could prioritise profits over patient safety. This view was shared by Matthias Groote, a German centre-left MEP and former chairman of the Parliament’s environment committee, who said that the move of medicines “sends a bad signal about the commercialisation of health”.
“It’s completely the wrong direction,” he said.
But Françoise Grossête, a centre-right French MEP, said the move was logical since this was a single-market issue. The move would be good for research, she said, adding that since the Commission is a college, the consumers’ voice would not be lost.
Bart Staes, spokesperson for the Green group on food issues, said that the move of food waste from the environment to the health department was “no coincidence” but “clearly a political decision by the ones busy with restructuring the Commission under the leadership of secretary-general Catherine Day”.
Climate concerns
Members of the environment committee are also concerned about the loss of a dedicated European commissioner for climate action. Under Juncker’s plan, there will be essentially two commissioners involved – Slovenia’s Alenka Bratušek, vice-president for energy union, and Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete, commissioner for energy and climate action.
MEPs also detect a change of emphasis in Juncker’s decision to move the copyright unit from the internal market department to the department for communications networks, content and technology (DG Connect). It suggests that he views copyright as a digital issue, a viewpoint not shared by content-providers, who prefer a rights-based approach.
The Parliament seems to have been wrong-footed by the move. The commissioner nominated to take charge of digital issues, Germany’s Günther Oettinger, is scheduled to be heard on 29 September by the Parliament’s committee for culture and education, and by the committee for industry, research and energy, suggesting that his dossiers will be dealt with by those two committees. This is a reversal for the committee on legal affairs, which until now has monopolised dossiers on copyright reform.
Mary Honeyball, a British centre-left MEP who is a member of the legal affairs committee, was unenthusiastic about the switch. She said that the committee was well placed to balance the interests of rights-holders with those of consumers and online companies.
Cecilia Wikström, a Swedish liberal MEP, said: “I don’t care which [Commission] DG takes care of it [copyright reform], it is very clear that the legal affairs committee should always be responsible. This is in the European Parliament’s rules of procedure. Juncker seems to believe that it’s him setting out the rules.”
She added: “The whole system of vice-presidents is out of the blue. How can the vice-president for the digital agenda not appear before the legal affairs committee? If I were the chair, I would fight for that.”
Groote said that the Parliament would not adjust its own committee configuration to mirror the changes in the Commission, a change suggested by Jerzy Buzek, the Polish MEP who heads the conference of committee chairs.
The internal organisation of the Commission is up to the Commission president, and MEPs have no formal influence over the process. They could, however, make it an issue during the hearings of commissioners-designate.
Parliament leaders were initially considering holding a hearing for the vice-presidents, involving all committees, that would touch on larger structural issues. But Manfred Weber, the leader of the centre-right European People’s Party group in the Parliament, confirmed on Tuesday (16 September) that this idea has been abandoned, and that the vice-presidents will be questioned by committees in the same way as the other commissioners.
The nominee who is most likely to address structural changes in the hearings is Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president, whom Juncker has described as his “right-hand man”.