EU Commissioner confirmation hearings

I volunteered to watch some of the commissioner confirmation hearings, and write them up. I started with McGrath, Commissioner Designate for democracy , justice, and the rule of law; to get a full picture of my notes, see also Digital market regulation in the EU elsewhere on this wiki.

See also Democratising the EU, Democratic renewal in the EU, and The next Commission., all on this wiki.

Here my notes and links.

Some pre-reading

1. CTOE’s 15 questions on Democracy
2. The 5 commissioners most likely to get the chop from politico.eu
3. Ireland’s commissioner hearing: Michael McGrath in spotlight as EU’s wannabe justice defender from politico.eu
4. Some comments by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) is a pan-European alliance of 127 in 40 countries protecting and advancing the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and displaced persons. They comment on Brunner, Commissioner-designate for Internal Affairs and Migration  and Dubravka Šuica , Commissioner-designate for the Mediterranean.

Links

1. On the Democracy Package, Protecting democracy, from the Commission
2. Foreign interference in EU democratic processes: Second report, from a special committee of the European Parliament, and press release on the report of the special committee on foreign interference to deal with corruption allegations EP Feb 23, and, the announcement of the committee and its ToR, by EU monitor.
3. On the Rule of Law report, upholding the rule of law, its annual cycle, from the Commission, includes links to past reports. The first was in 2020 and so they have never commented on the UK.
4. The EUs rule of law crisis: Has progress been made? by Joelle Grogan of UKICE, I summarise, good intentions but politics gets in the way; everyone claims it’s the priority, but power and the legislative programme are more important.
5. Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) Director Michael O’Flaherty delivered a policy statement on the challenges which are currently posed to the rule of law in the European Union on 15 May at a Law Society of Ireland seminar in Dublin. He spoke about how to promote and strengthen fundamental rights throughout the EU. (This is very good!) He quotes the World Justice Project’s index of the rule of law.
6. Suspension clause article 7 of the treaty on European union, from the treaty site.
7. The commission’s page on the coming, European media freedom act, also the query “eu media freedom act” returns lots of comments and explanations.
8. The AI Act, https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/ , the Commission’s page, https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai, and the Parliament’s page, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20230601STO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence

The debate on independence of the media, led me to look at how the US regulates foreign owned media, and their journalists; TLDR they consider them lobbyists or spies. See Guide to legal rights in the US from the US based Committee to Protect Journalists and the US government page on Visas for Members of the Foreign Media, Press, and Radio

Press Coverage

1. Michael Mcgrath speaks after three hour long confirmation hearing for justice commissioner, in the Irish Independent, says very little, but then neither did he.
2. politico.eu summarises their view of the hearings. This will save me a lot of time, although I will finish the McGrath hearings.
3. Pieter Kleppe, of the Spectator/Telegraph comments, clearly a right wing, pro-brexit commentator, but an interesting summary of the political party games.