A wise person once said that following the EU legislature is reminiscent of watching cricket. Twenty two peculiarly dressed men spend many hours on a field. 1% of Europeans watch the game with fascination, getting excited over every detail. Meanwhile, 99% of Europeans don’t understand the rules, whether it's cricket or EU lawmaking, and observe the proceedings with bewilderment.

The fact that hardly anyone grasps what's currently happening in Brussels is particularly evident these days. Yet, the task at hand is actually quite straightforward: whenever a new EU Commission is formed, the EU Parliament gets to decide whether it finds the candidates suitable or not. For two weeks, there were hours of hearings each day, the so called „grilling season“. However, the EU Parliament still could not give a clear thumbs-up or thumbs-down on seven of the candidates.

The reason is a tug-of-war between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. The SPD and its European sister parties insist that the Italian Raffaele Fitto should not receive the special status of Vice-President. Additionally, they oppose the Hungarian Olivér Várhelyi, a confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, remaining part of the EU Commissioners' College for another five years. In response, the conservatives are blocking the Spanish candidate Teresa Ribera, who – responsible for competition and transformation – would be a key figure for the Social Democrats.

Notably, these objections have almost nothing to do with the candidates’ performance at the hearings – or even the candidates themselves. Instead, it's about party tactics. The Christian Democrats are reluctant to confirm the candidates from Orbán and Giorgia Meloni’s camp through an alliance with right-wing parties, even though this would be possible in a second vote. They fear being accused of breaking the firewall against the far right. Instead, they are trying to get Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals to share the responsibility of confirming the Italian and Hungarian candidates. This, in turn, infuriates the Social Democrats, who criticise the Christian Democrats for having fewer qualms about leveraging a right-wing majority to push positions, as seen recently with the deforestation regulation.

You don’t need to understand the tactical maneuvers in detail to conclude that the parties are currently playing a dangerous game. Since hardly anyone outside of Brussels understands why, for example, the Italian Fitto could be accepted as an EU Commissioner but not as an EU Vice-President, the EU Parliament is jeopardizing its own credibility with this unfortunate personnel wrangling. There’s a real danger that European citizens, observing such squabbles, might buy into the far-right narrative that a political elite in Brussels is only concerned with itself, far removed from people's concerns. The only ones laughing up their sleeves are, therefore, the right-wing parties.

What should be done? The Christian Democrats would do well to seek solid trust-based relationships with the Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals, as they share the most common ground on the key issues for the next five years. But this requires taking the barrier to the far-right seriously in day-to-day legislation. At the same time, the Social Democrats would be wise not to get bogged down in symbolic matters like the selection of EU Commissioners. This, in turn, requires accepting that even Orbán or Meloni are entitled to appoint members from their ranks to the EU Commission. Accepting this is not about crossing red lines, but about acknowledging EU law.