B&K Newsletter: Where the Parliament goes: who is going to play a central role in the next European Parliament

A recap of the last two weeks

Last week, the European Parliament re-elected Roberta Metsola as her President and Ursula von der Leyen as the head of the European Commission, choosing continuity over an unstable scenario.?

This week, MEPs elected the chairs and vice chairs of the committees and subcommittees, clearly indicating who will be able to play a role and who will be kept out of the political game.?

Patriots for Europe (PfE), the political group created by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and home to Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, was cut entirely out of the top positions. Although numerically the third force in the hemicycle and being allocated two committee chairs and eight vice-chairs according to the D’Hondt method, a cordon sanitaire (a coalition bloc) formed by the Socialists, Renew, and The Greens, prevented PfE from accessing any political top positions. In contrast, the ECR (Conservatives and Reformists) group got some key roles. ECR will chair budgets (BUDG), agriculture (AGRI), and petitions (PETI) committees, and it will hold ten vice-presidencies across other committees. The ECR also secured two Parliament vice-presidencies during last week’s plenary session.

The allocation of committees’ chairs?

Zooming out, the allocation of chairs across the several committees gives us an anticipation of which political group will deal the cards when it comes to the different macro-areas of the European Commission’s political actions.??

MEP Antonio Decaro (S&D, Italy) was elected chair of the Environment (ENVI) Committee. His election suggests that any considerable modification to the Green Deal will constitute more than a friction point with the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the other right-wing groups in his committee since the S&D is reluctant to give up pieces of the Green Deal. ?

On the disputed topic of agriculture, the ECR’s MEP Veronika Vrecionová (ECR, CZ) was elected chair of the AGRI committee. Her election promises to make this committee the most right-leaning legislative term to date, with the centre-right EPP also securing two vice presidencies. This scenario will impose the European Commission – responsible for drawing up proposals?– the challenging exercise of promoting legislation on the matter.

The EPP, which emerged as the big winner in June’s elections, will hold key positions in the next legislature, having elected eight chairs (Foreign Affairs; Budgetary Control; Public Health;? Industry, Research and Energy; Transport and Tourism; Fisheries; Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs; Constitutional Affairs) and thirty-one vice chairs (at least one in each committee and subcommittee). Among others, the party will be central in matters concerning justice, constitutional affairs, and budget controls of the European Union institutions.??

Chairing the AFET (Foreign Affairs) and ITRE (Industry, Research, and Energy) committees will be a decisive step toward von der Leyen’s foreign policy and the gigantic industrial, tech, and energy legislation that von der Leyen’s next Commission wants to advance.

The specific gravity of member states in the political groups?

A final aspect to analyse comes up when we look at the specific gravity of member states in the composition of the political groups. Here, we can indicate which country will weigh more in shaping the positions of the different groups, and, at the same time, it allows us to anticipate which priorities for those member states will be reflected in the European Parliament.

Germany, Poland, and Spain will dominate the EPP’s policy agenda. Poland, being the only member state among the three with a Prime Minister from the same political group, can play a crucial role in shaping the EU’s enlargement agenda and support for Ukraine. Poland supports enlargement, including Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and the Western Balkans.

On the other hand, Germany will once again be the kingmaker of the EPP decision-making process, as it counts the largest delegation and key positions in the committees (notably, with the presidencies of Foreign Affairs, Constitutional Affairs, and Budgetary Control). For the same reasons of seat distribution, German MEPs will also be pivotal in determining The Greens’ political lines.?

Spain, together with the Italian delegation, will pull the strings of the S&D. Although?coming out of the elections downgraded, thanks to its support to von der Leyen, was able to retain some key roles in the committees: ENVI, ECON (Economic Affairs), INTA (International Trade), REGI (Regional Development), FEMM (Women’s rights and Gender Equality) will all be chaired by an S&D MEP.

France’s influence will be less decisive in the next European Parliament: a collateral effect of Patriots for Europe exclusion is that its largest delegation of French MEPs will be unable to play any relevant role in the next term. Moreover, after Emmanuel Macron's compromised leadership on the European and international stage, the poor score of the Renew group in the last European elections resulted in a downsized number of seats for the French-led liberal group.??

On a different note, although not officially supporting von der Leyen’s re-election, Giorgia Meloni was able to get a Vice President of the Parliament for his party with MEP Antonella Sberna. We’ll soon see if Italy will be assigned an economic portfolio in the next Commission. The extent of this re-alignment will be known when von der Leyen announces the structure of her new College of Commissioners after the summer break.?

Now that the European Parliament has taken final shape and we have a glimpse of who will be central in determining the positions and the political role of the hemicycle, the ball is in Ursula von der Leyen's court. With the investiture of the next College of Commissioners, she will tell us a lot about the new internal balances within the Member States in the EU decision-making process.?

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