In the light of the next week's commissioner hearings and after this week's tough negotiations with Jean-Claude Juncker, Gianni Pittella, the president of the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament, stated:
"After several meetings with Mr Juncker in the last 48 hours, we are pleased to have achieved some real results.
"We have obtained commitments for ‘fresh' money to be injected into the Investment Plan with a large share of public funding to change the direction of Europe and to finally boost growth, encourage development and create new jobs.
"We have also obtained a promise from Mr Juncker on depriving Lord Hill of responsibility for overseeing financial sector pay and a commitment about continuing the reform of the financial sector.
"In addition, the Commission president has committed to giving his support to the revision of the directive on posted workers as soon as Commissioner Thyssen proposes it. And he has accepted the serious possibility of sharing competence for medicines and medical devices between the departments for health and consumer affairs (DG SANCO) and enterprise and industry (DG Enterprise).
"But it has to be clear: it is not enough. The Socialists and Democrats want to achieve more.
"We stressed the importance of launching the investment plan by the end of November, with new financial instruments and stronger involvement from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
"Negotiations are still ongoing on the new institutional structure Juncker has proposed and the role of vice-presidents. We have reiterated that the S&D Group will not accept any veto powers for the vice-presidents. Mr Juncker has been supportive of our main requests but some important issues have yet to be clarified.
"We will keep up the pressure on all these issues. Mr Juncker’s promises must be put into practice. The commissioner hearings are about to start and we will make sure all the commissioners face a very demanding level of scrutiny.
"The battle is far from over."