{"id":4338,"date":"2024-11-28T14:19:27","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T13:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/?p=4338"},"modified":"2025-01-23T14:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T13:25:12","slug":"empress-ursula-and-the-rotten-apples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/empress-ursula-and-the-rotten-apples\/","title":{"rendered":"Empress Ursula and the Rotten Apples"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Dear Volters, dear friends,<\/p>\n

Europe finally has a government! This week, during the parliamentary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament has voted\u00a0for Ursula von der Leyens new EU Commission<\/strong>\u00a0and the 26 new “ministers” who will shape the future of the EU in the next 5 years. But it was a close call, or at least closer than most people thought. With 370 votes in her favor (out of 720), von der Leyen won just enough, but\u00a0we can’t call this a stable majority.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This has a lot to do with the shit-show we’ve seen these past weeks around the nomination of the candidates and their hearings. So much political power play, so many tactic manoeuvres. Let’s be clear: I’m happy that Europe can now move forward with this new Commission and that Parliament hasn’t kicked the can down the road. We can’t afford a weak and paralyzed Europe while Trump is preparing his second term in the US, Germany doesn’t really have a government and the French one is on the brink of collapsing, too. That’s why the Volt delegation has eventually decided to vote for this new Commission,\u00a0without enthusiasm but with pragmatism<\/strong>. Yet the whole process how we got there was a disgrace, and here’s why.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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SOME REALLY BAD APPLES\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
The new college of ministers is\u00a0far from our dream team<\/strong>. To be honest, we couldn’t really expect much with the current political landscape in Europe. But there’s two figures that really are a No-Go. First, Hungarian Commissioner Oliv\u00e9r V\u00e1rhelyi (responsible for Health and Animal Welfare). A good buddy of Orb\u00e1n’s and a guy that has called Parliament a bunch of idiots. He clearly doesn’t show any respect for the EU and its institutions.<\/p>\n

Second, and even more prominent, Italy’s Raffaele Fitto. A far right\u00a0Fratelli d’Italia<\/em>\u00a0guy who will be in charge of EU-Reforms, of all things! Even worse, von der Leyen appointed him a Vice-President, making him one of the\u00a0more powerful Commissioners in this College.<\/strong>\u00a0That wasn’t necessary. Von der Leyen has promised she wouldn’t work together with the far right, but this is exactly the opposite! And a reason why a lot of the MEPs didn’t vote for this Commission.<\/div>\n

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THE GOOD APPLES<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Not all Commissioners are that bad, though. In fact, we were genuinely\u00a0surprised by the expertise of some<\/strong>. We had interesting talks with them and could even built up a level of trust. More important still, Volt got a few\u00a0committments<\/strong>\u00a0that really matter to us: Strong support for Ukraine, better funding for Erasmus+, new frameworks for multimodal transport. And the promise to revise the EU treaties where they don’t work anymore – one of our core demands! We believe that the system is flawed, so it is really time for a treaty change. Who says we need one Commissioner from every member state, no matter how weird and inexperienced they are?<\/div>\n
And it’s also time to give\u00a0voters more power<\/strong>: If they elect members to the European Parliament, this Parliament should be in charge of nominating Commissioners and deciding on them one by one. To make every vote really count! For now, we can only approve or dismiss the Commission as a whole.<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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NO GAMBLING FOR URSULA.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
After intense discussions and a long thinking process, Volt has decided to not stand in the way of this new College of Commissioners.\u00a0It wasn’t an easy decision<\/strong>\u00a0and as always, we’re 100% transparent about this (if you want to have a closer look at our reasoning, you can find the pros and cons\u00a0here<\/a>). We believe that Europe now need stability and reliability. If this Commission hadn’t passed, we would have been in for more uncertainty until well into next year, without any prospects of actually getting better nominees for the next round.<\/p>\n

Ursula von der Leyen has won this vote. But only barely so. This is a strong signal for her: She cannot do whatever she wants. She must build a\u00a0stable majority across democratic forces<\/strong>\u00a0in this Parliament. And most important: She has to stop the dangerous schemes of her conservative colleague Manfred Weber to push this parliament even further to the right, collaborating with the populists. I told them both in my\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0just before the final decision:\u00a0Volt and the Greens don’t bite!\u00a0<\/strong>This Commission only passed\u00a0with<\/strong>\u00a0the votes of Volt, Pirates, some Greens and Social Democrats. Leaning to the far right is nothing she can rely on, and I think she got the message. Now it’s time to move forward together, because in the end, this is not about her or us. It’s not about the new Commissioners either. It’s about the future of Europe. Let’s make it happen!<\/p>\n

Yours,<\/p><\/div>\n

Damian<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Volters, dear friends, Europe finally has a government! This week, during the parliamentary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament has voted\u00a0for Ursula von der Leyens new EU Commission\u00a0and the 26 new “ministers” who will shape the future of the EU in the next 5 years. But it was a close call, or at least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unkategorisiert"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4341,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4338\/revisions\/4341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}