The European Parliament's Committee on International Trade (INTA) has undergone a major renewal following the European elections in May. Here is an overview of the members who will sit on it during this ninth Parliament.
Officially, the Committee on International Trade maintains an equivalent number of 41 MEPs (only 40 are listed on Parliament's website). However, only 12 members of the previous INTA committee remain from the previous committee, while more than half (22) of the MEPs joining the ranks of trade parliamentarians are newcomers to the European Parliament (the others are former MEPs who have changed committees), a significant development within this once rather exclusive club.
The political group landscape also varies, with the EPP (10 MEPs), the S&D (8) and the ECR (2) each losing two MEPs (-1 for the GUE), to the benefit of the RE (from 3 to 6 MEPs), ID (+2, to 5 MEPs) and Greens/EFA (+2, with 4 MEPs) groups. However, these last will not retain the position of second Vice-President, previously held by Yannick Jadot (French) of the commission (see linked document).
On the nationalities of MEPs, the distribution is probably more balanced, with 17 Member States represented (two more than in the eighth parliamentary term). Germany and France each lost two representatives (-1 for Latvia, Lithuania and Poland), and are now six and four deputies, respectively. However, the Germans retain their plurality, followed by the Italians and the British (5 deputies) (see linked document).
Key positions: On 10 July, Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany), outgoing president, took over as head of the parliamentary committee. Jan Zahradil (ECR, Czech Republic) moved from fourth Vice-President to first; the second and third positions in the EPP group were for Iuliu Winkler of Romania and Anna-Michelle Asimakopoulou of Greece respectively. Finally, it was a newcomer, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne of France (Renew Europe), who was appointed fourth Vice-President. During this vote, like other commissions, a cordon sanitaire was drawn against the ID group, by ousting the German Maximilian Krah (ID) from the position of second and then third Vice-President (see EUROPE 12293/5).
The INTA policy coordinators, speaking on behalf of the groups in the various parliamentary committees and responsible for preparing the decisions to be taken by the committees, are Christophe Hansen for the EPP (Luxembourg), the Belgian Kathleen Van Brempt for the S&D and her compatriot Geert Bourgeois for the ECR group, the Swedish Karin Karlsbro for RE, Emmanuel Maurel (French) for the GUE/NGL, for the Greens/EFA the Finnish Haidi Hautala and finally, for ID, Roman Haider (Austria) (see EUROPE 12295/2).
For Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), this commission “looks increasingly less like a dedicated trade committee, and more like an open stage for those who believe it must be subjugated and made secondary to domestic issues”. For Mr Lee-Makiyama, many of these MPs, both on the left and right of the political spectrum, are rather seeking to impose, in this committee, an internal agenda in order to win the favour of their national electorates.
To consult the commission's diagram: https://bit.ly/2xMf37X (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)