Updated | Vella cleared by ENVI committee chairman

The chairman of the European Parliament's environment committee, Giovanni La Via, has cleared the way for Karmenu Vella to become environment commissioner.

Both the environment and fisheries committees approved Karmenu Vella’s nomination as European Commissioner for the environment, fisheries and maritime affairs.

The Greens were mostly irked by Vella’s refusal to give firm commitments on reform and legislation.

Vella’s grilling took place amid increased dissatisfaction over the decision of Jean-Claude Juncker, the president-elect of the European Commission, to merge environment and fisheries into one portfolio.

Environment NGOs have accused Juncker of relegating environment to the second division and criticised the lack of a Commission vice-president for sustainable development.

Informed sources in Brussels said Juncker may address the issue by passing on the sustainable development portfolio to one of the vice-presidents of the Commission, most likely to be former Finnish prime minister Jyrki Katainen.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz has also sent a letter to Juncker, urging him to include sustainable development in Katainen’s, responsible for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness.

Legislators argued that Juncker seemed to have put more emphasis on economic growth than protecting the environment.

Euractiv, who reported the letter Schulz sent to Juncker, said the cross-cutting issue of sustainable development is not integrated into the portfolio nor in the mission letter of Vice-President Katainen.

“This means that VP Katainen is not being asked to integrate nor take into account this dimension while steering, coordinating and proposing policy choices to the College in the areas of jobs, growth, investment and competitiveness,” reads Schulz’s letter to Juncker.

Even though 'sustainable' is mentioned in the mission letter of the Finnish vice-president through the coordination of the mid-term review of the Europe 2020 strategy, it is not explicitly put on the same level as the competitiveness dimension.