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Ahead of the UK nominee for European Commissioner Lord Hill’s confirmation hearing in front of the European Parliamet next week, the FT quotes a senior MEP as saying, “There is no ‘kill Hill’ campaign… But it is very delicate, very delicate. It is up to Lord Hill and how he performs. We are not targeting him but that may not be enough to save him.”
Confirmation hearings for EU commissioners are the closest Brussels comes to blood sport, and this time around few nominees appear as vulnerable, or politically exposed, as Britain’s Lord Hill.
Within minutes of being tapped as the EU’s financial services chief, the European parliament was ablaze with objections. For Burkhard Balz, a German centre-right MEP, it was “problematic”; Gianni Pittella, the Socialist group leader, said a free-marketeer was “unacceptable”; for Sven Giegold of the Greens it was like letting “a fox guard the henhouse”.