The Spanish Teresa Ribera will take the reins of the Green Transition in the UE: He will occupy one of the most important positions in von der Leyen’s community executive. This will be equal, with 40% women, and leaning more to the right, with the presence of Meloni’s ultra party.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this Tuesday the new commissioners of the community Executive, and among them The Spanish Teresa Ribera will occupy one of the most important positions. The socialist will be executive vice president in charge of Competition and the Green Transition.
The still Spanish third vice president, recognized in Europe for her negotiation to achieve the “Iberian exception” after the war in Ukraine and for her role in the climate summits, will assume this important portfolio starting next November 1when the mandate of the recently announced College of Commissioners officially begins.
Specifically, Ribera will be “responsible for a clean, fair and competitive transition”as well as “competition policy”, as announced by the President of the Commission at a press conference at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. «He will ensure that Europe remains on the right path to meet the objectives of the European Green Deal and that we can digitalize and decarbonize our economy at the same time,” von der Leyen stressed.
Teresa Ribera: the European green pact is key in this legislature
Shortly after the announcement by the community president, Ribera thanked von der Leyen for his appointment as head of a “very good portfolio”. “It is an honor that I assume in a humble and committed manner,” he told the media in Parliament. “The president has made a proposal that reflects well the challenges that lie ahead,” she defended, and she trusted that with this portfolio she can «contribute in a very important way to improving European competitiveness, thinking about people and environmental limits.
She herself has explained that, in the future Clean Industrial Pact, which the Commission will present soon, there are “two sides of the coin that are unavoidable”, which are the powers of the French Stéphane Séjourné, proposed this Monday by Parisin charge of Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, and their own.
«The green transformation agenda is capital because if not, Europeans, like the rest of the world, would do very badly,” he assured. And as for the other leg of her portfolio, that of competition, she has defended the work of her predecessor, the Danish Margrethe Vestager, architect of the large fines imposed by Brussels against technology giants such as Google or Apple.
“Vestager has been an excellent vice president and commissioner,” he noted, and has defended “the work of building a internal market where there is no concentration of market power» that harms both the industry and citizens.
Ribera, after learning of her appointment as vice president of the EC: “It is an honor that I assume in a humble and committed manner”
The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has congratulated Ribera, a minister who has been with him since his first Executive in 2018. “It is great news for Europe and a source of pride for our country,” He has written on social networks, and has welcomed the fact that Spain has reached “the highest level of influence it has ever had in Brussels”, an idea that has been repeated by the Executive’s spokesperson, Pilar Alegría.
This has also emphasized the Sánchez’s role in this election, for his “great negotiating work” in Brussels. The president “has had a fundamental role in the negotiation of the senior officials of the Commission,” said Alegría in the press conference after the Council of Ministers.
PP and Vox ‘against’ without vision of the State
Meanwhile, the opposition has already shown its rejection of the new commissioner. The parliamentary spokesperson of the PP, Miguel Tellado, has expressed the opinion that the third vice president will be a “bad” European commissioner, although he has been “satisfied” that she does not have “legislative powers.” “No member of Sánchez’s Government seems acceptable to us to assume a portfolio of this type, least of all Ribera’s,” He stated, and added that his party will vote against his name in the European Parliament.
For his part, the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has also announced his negative vote and has assured that the appointment represents «a betrayal of the countryside» Spanishand has attacked the PP for supporting this appointment. «In just three months, the PP has gone from saying that to Teresa Ribera “She was only interested in power to continue ruining the Spanish countryside by appointing her European commissioner,” she criticized online.