Karmenu Vella was approved earlier today as commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries by MEPs in the environment and fisheries committees in the European Parliament, despite concerns about his poor hearing performance.
A recommendation letter for Karmenu Vella as the next European commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries was issued early this morning. In their evaluation, MEPs wrote “In spite of some lack of details in his replies, Mr Vella demonstrated that he had a sufficient grasp of the main issues inherent in the portfolio”. The MEPs furthermore wrote that “the lack of reference to sustainable development in the mission letter of Vice-President Katainen and to the dull implementation of the objectives of the 7th Environment Action Programme [….] continue to raise concerns”.
Several environmental NGOs have raised concern about Vella’s hearing particularly as he failed to give any convincing answers on environment. Jorgo Riss, director of Greenpeace EU said “Vella did not display a firm grasp on the dossiers he is meant to take responsibility for. He failed to convince that he is up for the job of environment, maritime affairs and fisheries commissioner”.
The Greens welcomed Vella’s commitment to continue the fight against illegal fishing but are overall concerned, giving the statement “He (Vella) was non-committal when asked about the goal of ending over-fishing by 2015 to allow stock recovery, under the new Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). He lacked the ability to go into detail on key files and seemed overly keen to exploit exploitation of the marine area without worrying about environmental constrains and possible damage”.
Others such as João Ferreira from the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, have said it is an error to merge the environment and fisheries portfolios. Green 10 raised similar concerns earlier this autumn when Juncker presented his choice of commissioner. Where they pointed out that despite the fact that a majority of EU citizens consider the environment a priority issue, the changes made by Juncker may “destroy Europe’s standing in the world as a pioneer and champion of tackling the global ecological crisis and switching to a green economy” and result in a roll back of existing EU commitments to sustainable development, on resource efficiency, air quality, chemicals policy, biodiversity protection and climate action.
It remains to be seen if Commissioner Vella will show strong leadership and stand by his words to continue the fight against illegal fishing (IUU), take on the work to implement the CFP as well as make sure that science and not politics are to decide annual fishing quotas.