Damage control was the order of the day after European Commissioner-designate Roumyana Zheleva’s confirmation hearings left her and her political backers facing manifold problems.

The January 12 hearings saw Zheleva turning in a widely-panned performance when faced with questions about alleged failures to follow the rules on disclosure of business interests, allegations that she denies, and scathing criticism of what her opponents described as the inadequacy of her answers.

The day after the hearings saw drama as formal requests were made to European Commission President Jose Barroso and to European Parliament lawyers to clarify whether Zheleva had followed the rules. Even if, as Zheleva and her supporters insisted, she was in the clear, there remained the matter of her being slammed as not good enough to be a European Commissioner.

A report by political leaders in the committee that held the hearing lashed out at her as ill-prepared and vague and even ignorant about the world trouble spots that she would have to deal with should her nomination as European Commissioner for International Co-operation, Humanitarian Aid and Emergency Response go ahead.

In Bulgaria, the Zheleva drama was the worst embarrassment faced by Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and his governing party GERB since its formation, although Borissov lashed out at political rivals for engineering political theatre in the European Parliament in a scramble for partisan gains.

At European Parliament level, groups such as the Greens and liberals were reserving judgment on Zheleva while the socialists called for her to be withdrawn as a candidate and replaced.

The European People’s Party (EPP), to which GERB is aligned in the European Parliament and of which Zheleva is a vice president, found itself facing the risk of severe political fallout should her nomination be scuppered. The EPP denied January 13 media reports that it had approached Barroso privately to request that someone else be substituted for Zheleva.

Media reports in Bulgaria named Defence Minister Nikolai Mladenov as the "plan B" replacement to whom Borissov alluded even while publicly backing Zheleva, but soon after these reports emerged, Mladenov rejected them as untrue.

The EPP, incensed by what it saw as a damaging political stunt by rival groups such as the Greens and socialists – who led the charge in the committee against Zheleva – was said to be planning revenge strategies during hearings of other candidate Commissioners.

Some reports suggested that a serious delay in finalising the question of Zheleva’s candidacy could put in jeopardy the entire process of confirming a new European Commission, already delayed in 2009 by the saga of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

The initial schedule was for MEPs to vote in plenary on January 26 whether to confirm the proposed Commission, in time to allow the new EC to take office in February.