Barrosso's input sought on controversial commission pick (2nd Roundup)

Jan 14, 2010, 19:00 GMT

Brussels - European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has been formally asked by the European Parliament to defend the probity of the Bulgarian nominee for his team, EU officials told the German Press Agency dpa on Thursday.

Rumiana Jeleva, 40, stands accused of lying about her ties to Bulgarian firm Global Consult on an official declaration of her financial interests. She is Bulgaria's sitting foreign minister and has been nominated to be the commission's humanitarian aid commissioner.

The accusations surfaced Tuesday during a parliamentary confirmation hearing, in which Jeleva was targeted by socialist and liberal deputies.

In an official letter signed by European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, parliament asked Barroso to confirm that Bulgaria's nominee respected the commission's code of conduct in completing her declaration of interests.

The commission chief is expected to reply at short notice, in order not to delay the appointment of his team. Parliament is supposed to vote on the commission slate on January 26.

The letter has been expected since Tuesday night, when the legislature's main political groups agreed to ask the commission and their own legal service to check on Jeleva's declaration, effectively freezing her application.

The parliament's legal service response is expected on Friday.

However, the head of the Socialist and Democrats (S&D) group, Martin Schulz, said that Jeleva is in any case 'not good enough for the job' and invited Barroso 'to reflect on this matter and draw the necessary conclusions.'

The conservative EPP group to which Jeleva belongs denounced the move as a 'witch-hunt' and, in turn, levelled accusations against Maros Sefcovic, Slovakia's socialist nominee for the post of commission vice president in charge of administration and inter- institutional relations.

Sefcovic, a career diplomat who holds the culture portfolio in the outgoing commission, allegedly claimed in 2005 that the Roma ethnic minority were 'exploiters of the Slovak welfare system.'

His staff issued a statement on Wednesday that he had 'no recollection of having said those words' and stressed that he 'deeply regrets if anything he may have said in the past has caused offence to anyone.'

That was not enough to silence EPP critics.

'What we would like, besides this apology, is to go much further with this issue,' Livia Jaroka, a Hungarian MEP of Roma origin, explained on Thursday.

She denied that the EPP's targeting of Sefcovic is linked to Jeleva's hounding by centre-left legislators, and explained that her group is waiting for the Slovakian candidate's hearing on Monday before expressing a definitive verdict on him.

But Jaroka did evoke the precedent of Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian would-be justice commissioner in 2004 who was forced to step down after offending legislators with comments on gays and women.

Slovakian organizations representing Roma threw their support behind Sefcovic, in a statement released in Bratislava on Thursday.

The council of Roma non-governmental organizations said the commissioner-designate had done 'exceptional' work for the cause of the Roma during the five years he spent as Slovakia's EU ambassador.

Under EU rules, each of the 26 designated commissioners has to attend a hearing before the parliament takes a vote of confidence in the whole body. Legislators cannot block single candidates, but they can threaten to veto the entire group unless certain nominees are replaced, as they did with Buttiglione.

Members of parliament have also voiced strong criticism against Lithuania's Algirdas Semeta, quizzed on Tuesday about the anti-fraud portfolio, and expressed less serious doubts over Finland's Olli Rehn, interviewed on Monday for the economic affairs post.

If parliament formally rejects one or more candidates, or asks for their portfolios to be changed, new hearings will have to be organized, putting into jeopardy the February 1 date suggested for the installation of the new commission.