Two European Commission nominees fall at the first hurdle

FEW PEOPLE expected the European Commission’s proposed new team to emerge intact from the confirmation hearings that started in the European Parliament this week. Claiming the scalp of at least one aspiring commissioner has become a tradition for the EU’s elected legislature. But the decision of a parliamentary committee to rule out two nominees before the full hearings had even started, an unprecedented move, suggests that the parliament’s vetting process will be even spikier this time round. By the time The Economist went to press the fate of three more nominees, including France’s Sylvie Goulard (a close associate of President Emmanuel Macron) appeared uncertain.

The first casualty was Laszlo Trocsanyi, Hungary’s former justice minister. In a secret ballot the parliament’s legal-affairs committee, charged with poring over the nominees’ financial declarations before hearings begin, declared him unfit to be commissioner. The committee’s digging revealed that a law firm bearing his name had been contracted to provide legal services to Hungary’s state-owned nuclear power plant while he was minister. Mr Trocsanyi says that he no longer owns shares in the firm, adding that it had not won any new government contracts during his ministerial term. But parliamentarians also pounced upon the appointment of one of the firm’s owners as his personal adviser in the justice ministry.