The Renew Europe group expressed its great surprise on Tuesday 17 December at the announcement made in the morning by S&D group President Iratxe García that the Conference on the Future of Europe would be chaired by the current President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli (S&D, Italy).
A position that the Liberal group covets for the Belgian Guy Verhofstadt, who had declared himself available very early on for this mission. The leader of the Liberal group, Dacian Cioloș, had spoken to David Sassoli about it on Monday 16 December, and the Italian then “assured that he was not interested and did not have the time to deal with it properly because of his responsibilities as President” of Parliament, a source from Renew Europe said. However, according to several S&D sources, the Italian would still be interested in covering this position.
The EPP had once sought to place Antonio Tajani in this position, but, when contacted on Tuesday, he had still not reacted to the Spanish woman's announcement at the time we were going to press.
Referring to several topics from the recent European Summit, Mrs García said at a press conference on Tuesday morning that “Parliament wants to play a leading role” and that David Sassoli “will lead the Conference on the Future of Europe”.
Internally, Parliament will adopt a resolution on the issue in January. Interinstitutional talks on the subject will then follow. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Pascal Hansens)