The European Parliament will be officially reformed at the constituent plenary session, scheduled for Tuesday 16 to Friday 19 July in Strasbourg, which will mark the start of the 10th parliamentary term.
European Parliament Presidency. The first task of the MEPs will be to elect their President and the Bureau of the Parliament on Tuesday.
The current President, Maltese Christian Democrat Roberta Metsola, is standing for re-election for a two-and-a-half-year mandate. There is little doubt as to the outcome of the vote, since the European Council’s agreement on the distribution of high European offices provides, albeit informally, for the Presidency of the European Parliament to go to the European People’s Party (see EUROPE 13441/1).
The political groups or 36 MEPs can put forward their own candidates until Monday 15th at 7pm. The election is held over a maximum of four rounds. To be elected, a candidate must win an absolute majority of the valid votes cast, except in the case of a fourth round, in which the two candidates with the highest number of votes would win by a simple majority.
In 2019, Italian Socialist David Sassoli won the election against Ska Keller (Greens/EFA, Germany), Sira Rigo (The Left, Spain) and Jan Zahradil (ECR, Czech Republic).
Bureau. On Tuesday afternoon, MEPs will elect the Bureau, made up of the European Parliament President, 14 Vice-Presidents and five Quaestors, who are responsible for the administrative and financial affairs of the MEPs. The list of candidates from the main groups has been finalised, although the conservative ECR group is reserving its choice of the two candidates it will put forward until Monday (see EUROPE 13451/16).
On Friday 12 July, the spokesman for the far-right group Patriots for Europe, Spaniard Alonso de Mendoza, condemned the attempt by pro-European groups to prevent the election of a vice-president from its ranks by deploying a ‘cordon sanitaire’, calling this political manoeuvre “undemocratic” and hostile to millions of voters. ECR group spokesman Michael Strauss said that a ‘cordon sanitaire’ was likely to “discriminate against” millions of citizens. The Patriots for Europe group will decide on Monday whether to nominate a candidate for the vice-presidency of the Parliament.
European Commission Presidency. The Conference of Presidents (CoP) of the political groups has decided that the election of the candidate nominated by the European Council for the Presidency of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will take place on Thursday 18 July at 13:00. In this vote, which will take place in a secret ballot, it must obtain an absolute majority of MEPs, i.e. 361 votes in 2024. In 2019, Mrs von der Leyen was elected by nine votes (see EUROPE 12297/1).
On Thursday morning, in the Chamber, the nominated candidate will unveil the broad outlines of her political programme and debate with MEPs. Between these discussions and the election, the political groups will have the opportunity to meet to determine their final position for the vote.
Since her nomination, Ms von der Leyen has been walking the corridors of the European Parliament to talk to the political groups (see EUROPE 13449/15, 13450/7), the national delegations and the MEPs likely to support her, with the exception of those from the far right. She is due to meet The Left Group on Monday and the ECR Group on Tuesday morning (see EUROPE 13451/15).
At the heart of the outgoing Commission President’s strategy is the creation of a pro-European, pro-Ukraine and pro-rule of law political platform, made up of the EPP, S&D and Renew Europe groups, which together have 401 votes. The margin is narrow, since some of these groups’ MEPs – the French Christian Democrats, the Irish Liberals – have announced that they will vote against Ms von der Leyen, while others, such as the Italian Social Democrats, have not declared their support. And the S&D and Renew Europe groups are raising the stakes, pointing out that their support is “not a blank cheque” and remains conditional on the announcement of measures that they would like to see included in the political programme of a potential ‘von der Leyen II’ Commission.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, the Chair of the EPP group, Germany’s Manfred Weber, warned the other groups on the platform that: “If Ms von der Leyen fails next week, there will be a risk of a lot of instability. And one man will be happy: Viktor Orbán. I don't want to give Orbán this gift”.
To secure wider support, the German Christian Democrat is holding informal talks with the Greens/EFA group, which said it was ready to cooperate with the platform after having rejected Ms von der Leyen’s candidacy in 2019. But an agreement with the environmentalists that is too conspicuous could offend certain conservatives and even some Christian Democrats, who blame the European Green Deal, the major project of the von der Leyen Commission, for all the ills.
On the Conservative side, Mr Strauss has indicated that the MEPs of the ECR group will be free to vote as they wish. Some will only support Ms von der Leyen if her programme “diverges significantly from the previous programme”, he warned, noting that the Polish, Romanian and French delegations had already indicated their opposition to the re-election of the outgoing President. While the Czechs in the ECR group will vote in favour of the candidate, the choice made by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d'Italia MEPs, will be an important one. At the European Council, it had abstained on the appointment of Ms von der Leyen, maintaining a constructive ambiguity.
The fact remains that, if the German Christian Democrat is re-elected, it will be a return to the process of head of list candidates (‘Spitzenkandidaten’) put forward by the European political parties in the run-up to the European elections in June.
EUCO. On Wednesday, the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission could present the conclusions of the European Summit of Thursday 27 June to MEPs. At that summit, the heads of state or government had nominated candidates for the three highest European offices, agreed their strategic agenda for 2024-2029 and signed joint security commitments with Ukraine (see EUROPE 13441/1).
HU24EU. This debate is likely to include reactions to the chaotic start of the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 13450/5). In fact, the presentation by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of the priorities of the Hungarian Presidency will not take place next week, but rather during the September plenary session.
On Wednesday morning, a second debate could focus on the EU’s continued support for Ukraine, with the adoption of a specific resolution.
Composition of the political groups. The European elections have changed the composition of the Parliament’s hemicycle, which now leans more to the right of the political spectrum. An overview of the situation of the political groups, which may change at any time during the legislature.
The EPP group emerged victorious from the European elections, consolidating its status as the largest group, to such an extent that it is virtually unavoidable in the formation of political majorities. Before the elections, the Christian Democrat family had 176 seats. It now has 188 seats, or 26.11% of the total number of MEPs in the Chamber. Germany’s Manfred Weber has been re-elected as Chair of the Group (see EUROPE 13435/31).
The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats lost two seats compared to the previous legislature (136 seats, or 18.89% of the total number of MEPs). Spanish MEP Iratxe García Pérez has been unanimously re-elected as President of the S&D Group (see EUROPE 13439/11).
The new far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, chaired by Frenchman Jordan Bardella, currently has 84 seats (11.67% of the total number of MEPs). Led by France’s Rassemblement National and Hungary’s Fidesz, it was officially formed earlier this week (see EUROPE 13448/1).
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group currently has 78 seats, or 10.83% of the total number of MEPs. It is co-chaired by Nicola Procaccini (Fratelli d'italia, Italian) and Joachim Brudziński (PiS, Polish) (see EUROPE 13445/23). The group recently lost the MEPs from the Spanish ‘Vox’ party, who joined the PfE group.
The third largest group in the European Parliament during the previous legislature, Renew Europe (RE) currently has 77 seats, or 10.69% of the total number of MEPs. The group, which brings together centre-right liberal political groupings, has reappointed Valérie Hayer (see EUROPE 13439/12) from France as its leader.
Although they had 74 MEPs after the 2019 elections, the environmentalists and regionalists MEPs have seen their representation in the European Parliament fall. The Greens/EFA group currently has 53 seats, or 7.36% of the total number of MEPs in the Chamber. The group elected The Netherlands’ Bas Eickhout and Germany’s Terry Reintke as co-chairs (see EUROPE 13435/6).
The Left Group currently has 46 members, i.e. 6.39% of the total votes in the European hemicycle. France’s Manon Aubry and Germany’s Martin Schirdewan form the co-presidency of the radical left-wing group (see EUROPE 13445/25). The group welcomed eight Italian MEPs from the Movimento Cinque Stelle (‘M5S’) and two others fromAlleanza verdi a Sinistra: the activist Ilaria Salis, imprisoned in Hungary up until her election (see EUROPE 13428/5), and Mimmo Lucano.
Formed on Wednesday 10 July (see EUROPE 13450/8), the far-right group Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) was built around the German AfD party, which was expelled from the former Identity and Democracy group at the end of May (see EUROPE 13415/2). The new group comprises 25 MEPs from eight EU countries and is co-chaired by Germany’s René Aust and Poland’s Stanislaw Tyszka. It represents 3.47% of the total number of MEPs in the European hemicycle.
Finally, 12 MEPs will sit on Tuesday as Non-attached Members, while 21 other newly elected MEPs do not currently belong to any of the established political groups.
To see the breakdown of the political groups in the Chamber: https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/ (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit & Mathieu Bion)