Crețu mounts defence of regional aid

Romania’s nominee gives a confident appearance despite a lack of expertise.

The European Parliament’s press release on the opening of confirmation hearings this week carried the headline “scrutiny time”. But the MEPs on the committee on regional development clearly viewed Corina Cretu as an ally rather than a subject of scrutiny. There seemed to be a closing of ranks around a policy – and a massive pot of money – that is vulnerable to accusations of waste and to budget cuts.

The tone during the hearing was generally defensive, with only a few questions devoted to more conceptual issues of what regional aid should and should not try to achieve.

Among the 45 prepared questions, there were none at all about Cretu’s work for Ion Iliescu, a controversial leader of post-Communist Romania, or about her membership of the country’s socialist party, which in the process of cementing its power has clashed repeatedly with the European Commission. Nor, indeed, were there any questions taking aim at her lack of expertise, even though assessing a nominee’s knowledge of their future portfolio is one of the stated purposes of the confirmation hearings. The Commission’s services had done an impressive job at coaching the nominee.

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Cretu certainly did not come across as the novitiate that she is; she appeared to be firmly in command of her portfolio, although her replies – as tends to be the case in these hearings – were on the general side. Having spent the last eight years in the European Parliament, she will not have had any trouble flattering her fellow MEPs, which she did in abundance.

She opened numerous replies by paying homage to the MEPs who were asking the questions, thanking them for their energy and dedication to the cause of regional policy. Cretu, in her opening statement and several of her replies, mounted a strong defence of regional aid as a driver for economic growth. In order to fulfill that potential, she said, it has to be tailored to the specifics of each region, and the best way to do that was by involving regional and local authorities, businesses and civil society. Aid is not charity but also imposes a moral obligation on the recipient to make the best of it, she stressed. The need for involving various segments of society in planning regional projects was a recurring theme of her replies; she also suggested that not all member states were equally committed to the partnership principle.

Another recurring theme in Cretu’s replies was the need to work within the constraints of the EU’s fiscal rules. Rather than letting herself be pulled into a philosophical debate about compatibility between the EU’s austerity policies and regional aid, she pointed out that both policies had been properly adopted by the member states and the European Parliament and she would have to work with them.

Nobody left the hearing with any doubt that Cretu would be confirmed. Her answers tended to be to the point, if general, and while her flattering of the MEPs was anything but subtle it might have won over the odd doubter. In the end, it did not matter much at all: her confirmation is the ‘grand coalition’ at work, and she would have had to produce a complete failure of a hearing in order for the outcome to be put in question.

Click here to read the live blog from the hearing – as it happened