Oettinger on Selmayrgate: Nothing to see here

Commissioner defends super-fast promotion of Juncker’s chief of staff.

After more than a month of breathless accusations about a nepotism scandal, a European Parliament hearing on Martin Selmayr’s promotion was like watching a cat chase its own tail.

MEPs went around and around in questioning the European Commission’s human resources chief, Günther Oettinger, who reiterated that the Selmayr promotion didn’t break any rules.

However, Oettinger said he intended to hold a discussion with the other EU institutions on how to improve the method of choosing a new secretary-general.

Oettinger appeared before the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee on Tuesday to assuage fears about the promotion of Selmayr from Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff to secretary-general. The speed and unexpected nature of the move angered many in the Parliament, who accused the Commission’s top brass of a lack of transparency.

More than 130 questions were filed by MEPs on the subject.

Oettinger — a German conservative, as is Selmayr — was adamant that nothing untoward went on. “We’ve examined it again and again — whether the procedure was legal … and we believe that it was fully in line with the regulations,” he said.

“If you say that the spirit of the law has [only] been partially complied with, we are really in the area of imagination here,” Oettinger added.

He did agree with a request from Inés Ayala Sender, a Socialist member of the committee, to provide further access to documents on how the secretary-general is chosen. This would be done after Juncker’s time in office ends — the Commission chief steps down in 2019.

“This must be done according to a new set of rules inspired by a greater transparency, a collegial approach and an equal opportunities-based principle,” Ayala Sender said.

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The parliamentary hearing, which was open to the public and lasted more than two hours, took place two weeks after MEPs held a plenary debate on the same topic in which they strongly condemned what they said was a lack of integrity and transparency in the decision. Oettinger also spoke at the plenary debate and many of his remarks on Tuesday echoed what he said then.

The commissioner dismissed concerns about Selmayr’s competence and any allegations of nepotism or cronyism. “I didn’t know Mr. Selmayr is a relative of Mr. Juncker,” Oettinger said.

However, he evaded questions about the need for a procedure to appoint senior managers that involves several candidates, saying “we never have a guarantee that there are many we can choose from and if one candidate who fills the requirement is prepared to fulfill that post, it would be unfair to that person to cancel that whole procedure.”

Some MEPs asked why Oettinger and most of his fellow commissioners didn’t know until the last minute that the previous secretary-general, Alexander Italianer, was retiring.

“Do you not feel bypassed?” Dutch Liberal Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy asked. Oettinger did not answer.

After the hearing, Gerbrandy said in a statement that the hearing “raised more questions than it provided answers.”

Oettinger also denied that Selmayr took part in a pre-European summit meeting of the European People’s Party last week. Selmayr, Oettinger said, was not in the room when senior European conservatives were discussing “a proper and rapid response to the decisions from the USA” to put up tariffs on EU imports of steel and aluminum.

He also said Selmayr had helped draft some responses to MEPs’ questions on his appointment as “it would be strange not to.”

The Budgetary Control Committee will include its opinions on Tuesday’s hearing in a resolution to be voted on by all MEPs in April.