As a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs, Carlos Moedas knows how to sell. That skill was evident on Tuesday (30 September) during his hearing before MEPs to become European commissioner for research, science and innovation.

Moedas opened the session with an emotive account of his European trajectory: from his childhood in a poor region transformed as a result of European Union solidarity funds to his wedding in Paris and the birth of two of his children in London. He spoke in Portuguese, French and English.

Yet one detail above all others seemed to seal his success: he was one of the first Portuguese students to participate in an Erasmus exchange.

“Erasmus was the defining moment of my life,” he told MEPs. Few seemed more thrilled than Jerzy Buzek, the Polish MEP who chairs the committee on industry, transport, research and energy (ITRE). He picked up on this both in his closing remarks to the committee and his press conference after the hearing. Buzek was not alone. Moedas received warm applause at the end of the hearing.

He also earned a cheer with a curt answer to Janusz Korwin-Mikke, leader of the Polish New Right Party, who called into question the European ideal. “I want my children to live in a Europe that is better for all of us.” Yet such was the mood that even Korwin-Mikke left the hearing with a smile on his face. Krišjãnis Karinš, a Latvian centre-right MEP who is the European People Party’s spokesman in ITRE, described Moedas afterwards as “the right man for the right job”.

Dan Nica, a Romanian centre-left MEP, the Socialists and Democrats group co-ordinator in ITRE, said that Moedas was broadly in line with the S&D priorities, although he observed that the Commissioner-designate was short on detail. The only real naysayers seemed to be Portuguese MEPs from the left and hard-left, with a group gathering outside after the hearing to denounce Moedas, until recently a minister in Portugal’s centre-right government, to Portuguese television.

They clearly harbour rancour against Moedas for his role in implementing the tough austerity conditions attached to the €78 billion bail-out given to Portugal in 2011. Moedas was the minister responsible for negotiating and implementing the bail-out.

They seethed when Moedas used that very experience to portray himself as the ideal candidate to administer the EU’s €80bn research budget between now and 2020: “As someone who was responsible for managing different dossiers in different ministries [during the bail-out], I am able to deliver.” At another point he said, again with reference to his time as a minister in Portugal: “My focus will be delivery, delivery and delivery. I worked across institutions and sectors. I broke up silos.”

Overall, Moedas’s performance was convincing. He answered all the questions put to him in impeccable English, switching on occasion into his native language, or Spanish, or French (although there were curiously few questions in that language). He also knew his dossier. Europe needed to improve research in the field of nano-technologies, photonics and nuclear fission, he said. Moedas also discussed issues such as “science 2.0” and the “societal challenges” of the future.

Innovation needs to be measured by output and not input, he remarked. Observing that Moedas was “well-prepared” was something of a refrain as the MEPs shuffled out of the hearing room, one repeated by Hans-Olaf Henkel, a German eurosceptic MEP, who is a vice-chair of the ITRE committee. But, said Henkel, Moedas was too diplomatic.

“I am a little disappointed by his ability to please everyone,” he said. Moedas was careful to say that member states needed to spend more on innovation, but refrained from naming those that spent too little; he said he wanted to support the humanities and social sciences, but did not deplore recent cuts to their funding, said Henkel. Yet perhaps the best example of Moedas’s willingness to please came halfway through the hearing. Asked about the reorganisation of the Commission college by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission’s president-elect, Moedas suggested it embodied Europe’s skill at non-technological innovation.