International

In a week's time the European Parliament gathers for its first meetings of the year. All eyes will be on the hearings for the proposed new Commissioners, who must yet be approved by the Parliament. Once again the dog will have his day, but the new Commission is unlikely to be given a hard time. The right-wing Parliament will without doubt give its support to this right-wing Commission.

Then again we aren't quite finished with the Christmas recess. First we have of course to exchange New Year's greetings – and I wish all my readers a very happy 2010 – but straight after that the hearings will take off. The expectation is that the media will pay these a great deal of attention, especially if things get exciting and the future of certain Commissioners-designate is cast into doubt.

Five years ago this is just what happened, when the EP made it clear following his expression of homophobic views, that Rocco Butiglione, the Italian nominee who had been selected to be Commissioner for Justice, was unfit for the post,. Although the Parliament cannot officially reject an individual Commissioner-designate, the threat of a vote against the entire Commission eventually led to Butiglione's removal from the list.

Whether anything similar will occur is hard to predict. The centre-right group, the Christian Democrats or European People's Party (EPP), have said that they intend to put a few rather pointed questions to nominees from eastern European countries, because of their Communist past. We shall see. More importantly in my view is that we elicit commitments from the new Commissioners to a more people-centred economy, with attention to the unemployed, to people who have been most affected by the crisis, to the hidden poverty amongst the self-employed, and so on. I am, I have to say, not at all optimistic about my chances. As a MEP you can't put a question just like that. No, there are all sorts of procedures to be followed, and now it turns out that only the 'coordinators' from each political group – the individual MEPs given special responsibility by the group for coordinating work on a particular committee – have a right to put questions. My SP colleague Kartika Liotard is, for example, coordinator for the SP's group, the United Left, on the Environment Committee. This gives her the right to put a single question. In all other cases it's the luck of the draw: should any time remain, you might get the chance at the last minute to put questions. In short, it's a good idea to get everything worked out in advance, working closely with other MEPs, and this is what we will be doing.

We'll know more by around 20th January, by which time we'll have seen whether the Greens and social democrats have any sort of backbone. If they cooperate with us, we might be able to light a few fireworks.