EU commissioners line up to join ranks of European parliament

EU regional policy commissioner Danuta Hübner may be a possible candidate in June’s European elections, it has emerged.

The former academic, Poland’s first EU commissioner, has been a member of José Manuel Barroso’s executive since May 2004.

When asked if she had been approached to stand for the upcoming EU-wide election, Hübner, previously Poland’s European affairs minister, said the possibility had “not been excluded.”

If the former top economist does decide to stand, most likely on the Socialist platform, she will join a growing list of top-ranking officials and ministers who plan to seek election to parliament in the summer's eagerly-awaited poll.

From the ranks of the Liberal movement, Louis Michel, currently EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, will be a candidate for the francophone Liberals in Belgium.

Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt will head the list for the Flemish Liberals while an ALDE source said that Meglena Kuneva, EU commissioner for consumer protection, will head the list of Bulgarian Liberals.

An official in Verhofstadt's office in Brussels confirmed that, if elected, the youthful-looking Belgian, who was once tipped as a future commission president, will take up his seat.

Two prominent figures from the centre-right in France are also standing in the elections.

They are agricultural minister Michel Barnier, a former EU regional affairs commissioner, and controversial justice minister Rachida Dati.

Both are candidates for French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling centre-right party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP).

Barnier is number one on the list while Dati occupies the second spot, both in the Ile-de-France constituency in greater Paris.

Under French rules, both ministers will have to resign before the campaign begins in May and both will have to take up their seats in Brussels if, as is virtually certain, they are elected.

Viviane Reding, commissioner for information society and media, is also a confirmed candidate for the CSV party in Luxembourg.

Not to be outdone, the UK Independence Party’s ‘big name’ candidate is former commission whistleblower Martha Andreasen.

Andreasen, who was suspended from her role as the commission’s chief accountant in 2002 after revealing that the commission's accounting system was widely open to fraud, will stand second on the party’s list in South East England where ,in the last European elections, it had two MEPs elected.

Another likely candidate is Eddie Izzard, the cross-dressing comedian and actor, who, according to a recent story in the Daily Telegraph, is pursuing his ambition of becoming an MEP.

"It is true that I want to stand for something in Europe," he reportedly said.
"The Second World War was something we did as Europeans. The EU was set up in order to stop that and to help trade and make it easier, so that's why I'm passionate about that."

If Izzard is elected to the parliament, he said he will continue to wear women's clothes.

"I am a transvestite," he told the paper. “I can't turn in cross-dressing. It's like me saying to you would you turn in having blue eyes?"

A parliament insider said, "It is still early days because many of the national delegations are still in the process of drawing up their lists for June. However, the fact that so many high-calibre people, including EU commissioners, apparently want to become MEPs does reflect the growing importance of parliament in the EU decision-making process.

"It is something of a feather in its cap that people like Verhofstadt want to stand and that big hitters like Hübner may be also be a candidate."

Parliament already boasts several former prime minister and ministers among its ranks of MEPs, including Jean-Luc Dehaene, of the EPP-ED group, and former Polish premier Jerzy Buzek.

One commissioner who is not standing is Estonian Siim Kallas, the commissioner for administrative affairs. His spokesperson dismissed speculation that he would be a candidate, saying, "He has no intention of becoming an MEP."

• Previous article
• Next article