Malta's EU commissioner-designate, Joe Borg, will be interviewed by the European parliament in Brussels today. He will be the third among the 10 commissioners-designate to appear before the parliament as part of a procedure that precedes the official appointment of any commissioner to the European Commission.
Dr Borg will serve in the current Commission led by President Romano Prodi and which will end its term in November 2004.
The hearings will start at 2 p.m. Dr Borg will be preceded by the Latvian and Hungarian commissioners-designate respectively. His hearing is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. and will last till 6.20 p.m. Channel 12 will be broadcasting the hearings live via EuropebySatellite in collaboration with the Malta-EU Information Centre and the Information Office in Malta of the European parliament.
The hearings will continue tomorrow and Thursday. Each commissioner-designate will be questioned by a competent parliamentary committee according to the portfolio that the commissioners-designate will share with the existing commissioners. In the case of Dr Borg, he will be sharing the portfolio on development and humanitarian aid with Commissioner Poul Nielsen.
The hearings will be open for all members of the European parliament. Observers from the national parliaments may also put questions.
On Thursday, after the last hearing, all the chairmen of the 17 parliamentary committees will meet to prepare the meeting of the Conference of Presidents that is made up of the president of the European parliament and the political group chairmen. Also on Thursday, at 4.30 p.m., there will be a press conference by Pat Cox, president of the European parliament.
At the plenary session of the European parliament in early May there will be a vote of confidence on the new enlarged Commission as a whole.
During the hearing each candidate sets out his/her position, on the basis of the responses to the questions in the questionnaire that was sent to each commissioner-designate in March. The political groups will then start interviewing the candidate. After each question the candidate replies.
There will be two rounds of questions, which means that each political group will intervene twice. After each hearing, the committee chairman and the coordinators (one per political group) assess the hearing. They will then convey their conclusions to the Conference of Presidents (which will meet on Thursday).
In the case of Dr Borg, he will be asked about the EU's policy for development and humanitarian aid, two sectors that form part of the portfolio of Commissioner Nielsen with whom Dr Borg will spend six months until the formation of the new Commission.
As he appears before the parliament, Dr Borg is expected to deliver an introductory note about the European Union. He will then proceed to explain his position on various aspects according to the two questionnaires he received last month. One questionnaire is of a general nature and the second is specific to the portfolio of development and humanitarian aid.
The first questionnaire contains about 19 questions. Dr Borg will provide details on his professional experience, his independence once he is appointed commissioner, how he sees the future of the EU, his views on the democratic accountability to the European parliament and the commissioner's role and priorities during his/her term of office.
In the second questionnaire Dr Borg is asked for his comments on the objectives of EU development policy, the coordination and coherence of EU policies, the reform of the Commission's external services, the European Development Fund, the development policy of the new member states and sectoral policies like the fisheries agreements, health and population.
More information is available at http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade
Mr Attard is acting head, Malta-EU Information Centre.