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KARL SCHEMBRI quizzed Commissioner Joe Borg after last Wednesday’s parliamentary showdown
With hindsight, one can seriously say that Joe Borg was extremely lucky to just scrape through unscathed from a controversy last May during his grilling in front of the committee of MEPs prior to his appointment as Development Commissioner.
With the Buttiglione storm still raging on, the European Parliament has established that one’s personal moral convictions are of extreme relevance to one’s political office, despite the Italian conservative philosopher’s arguments to the contrary.
Declaredly anti-abortion, Borg admits he could have easily faced the same fate of Buttiglione had MEPs believed that his personal views conflicted with his new roles as commissioner.
“It could have been me,” he said about Buttiglione, just a few minutes after Barroso declared last Wednesday that he was not proposing a commission line-up for a vote as yet. “I’m sure that all of the 25 commissioners have their own personal views about morally sensitive issues, such as abortion. Obviously one states his position and then it is up to MEPs to take a decision on it.”
As commissioner responsible for the fisheries portfolio, Borg finds himself responsible for some technical and politically sensitive issues that are evidently not morally contentious, saving him from some acute crises of conscience.
But last May he just inched through the grilling when he was asked, as a nominee for the development and corporation commission, about his personal views on abortion.
“At that time the committee had not decided against me, but there was a strong element in the committee which was not pleased with my answer,” Borg recalled, adding with a smile that such issues “do not crop up when it comes to fisheries” as the fact that he is a staunch opponent of abortion is inconsequential to his job of running fisheries policy.
In fact Borg’s case clearly shows that the whole controversy over Buttiglione has nothing to do with what has been called an “anti-Catholic inquisition”.
About Buttiglione himself, Borg says he would rather not comment at such “a sensitive moment” and adds that the Italian commissioner-designate is not the only one to have been received critically, but on the issue personal convictions the Maltese commissioner says: “If you’re an MEP I think you have a duty to state your position. If you’re a commissioner you have every right to have a personal position but that should remain your personal position, because as a commissioner you form part of a team which takes decisions.”
Even though unlikely, it is possible that Borg may have his portfolio changed yet again and that would mean having to sit again for the inquisitive scrutiny by MEPs, a prospect he clearly does not look forward to after all the “martyrdom” and sleepless nights he already had to go through.
“To tell you the truth, after having gone through that martyrdom with all the problems and tension it brings with it, it’s not something I would like to go through again, but then again it is part of the responsibilities that come with the job,” he said. “Obviously my wish is to retain my portfolio on fisheries and maritime affairs, first of all because I like it and the more I get into it the more I’m getting to like it; and secondly because, thanks to high political sensitivity about it, it is a relevant portfolio; and there is also the future direction that the EU wants to take as regards maritime policy. There are a lot of challenges and I would be disappointed if I had to take another portfolio, but if the political realities demand so then so be it.”
He says he was not surprised by the turn of events even though this was a new experience for the European Parliament in which the designated commissioners were “a bit like guinea pigs”:
“My position was that we should never underestimate the power that political groups have in the European Parliament, today more than ever,” Borg said. “Today everyone realises that this is a new reality that we have to learn to live with. Parliament has evolved from a talking shop to an institution which has more and more legislative powers.”
Borg says the process was a show of force between the European Parliament and member states, and also between different political groups in parliament.
“It’s a new experience, because up to now we have almost always witnessed the national influence on MEPs; if a member state is run by, say, a Socialist government, that would influence a lot the vote of the Socialists”, he said, while this time round MEPs went against their governments’ wishes and were prepared to vote against the whole commission, which included Socialist commissioners.
Politics aside, the Buttiglione incident is a telling lesson in public scrutiny and accountability. With MEPs increasingly referring to the nominated commissioners’ actions and declarations in the past in judging their integrity, apart from their commercial interests and competence, they are making it clear that not everyone is eligible for the post and that skeletons in one’s closet could include anything.
Which means that future Maltese commissioners who may have said or made political blunders on our sheltered shores would be confronted with their actions, with the ensuing embarrassment that would create for the Maltese government. Just imagine a future commissioner nominated by a Labour government who may have endorsed Sant’s blatant disregard of the EU referendum result last year, having to face the scrutiny of MEPs from all over Europe with a high democratic benchmark. Or a commissioner designate who has publicly called one of the MEPs a Taliban.
Indeed, the European Parliament is promising to give us more thrills than we have ever dreamt of.
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