The new European Parliament - a Burson-Marsteller Insight

Twelve of the European Parliament’s committees held their constituent sessions on Thursday, with the remaining committees meeting on Monday. With the Parliament having adopted its decision on the numerical strength of committees, and the political Groups having decided on which members will sit on which committee, the Parliament now has a full list of members and substitutes online.

Other positions, such as Group coordinators, will be decided by Groups either next week or after the summer break. The EPP has already chosen coordinators for the foreign affairs committee (Elmar Brok and José Ignacio Salafrance Sanchez-Neyra), the environment committee (Peter Liese and Richard Seeber, with Elisabetta Gardini as ‘vice-coordinator’), the industry committee (Pilar Del Castillo) and the legal affairs committee (Tadeusz Zwiefka). Diana Wallis will be the Liberals’ coordinator on the legal affairs committee.

Normally, there should be only one coordinator per Group per committee, so it remains to be seen whether the other Groups will challenge the EPP’s choice for the foreign affairs and environment committees.

After the constituent meetings have been completed, new MEPs will take a break after a summer of campaigning, elections and negotiations. They return on 24 August to begin their legislative and political work in the new Parliament.

1145 update:

The Parliament has now elected its 14 vice-presidents, with some controversy. Instead of what is usually a confirmation of agreements between political Groups, there was a political battle between 15 candidates that went to three secret ballots.

The ‘additional’ candidate, Edward McMillan-Scott, who had already declared himself “uncomfortable” with the British Conservatives’ new European Conservatives & Reformists (ECR) Group, stood as an independent candidate. The first two rounds of voting saw Silvana Koch-Mehrin (ALDE, Germany) - about whom there had been some controversy over her relatively low attendance rate - finish in last place. However, in the third round of voting (where candidates could be elected without reaching an absolute majority of 369 votes) saw Michal Tomasz Kaminski (Poland), the ECR’s official candidate, finished last and was eliminated.

Mr McMillan-Scott has now lost the Conservative whip and been expelled from the ECR Group. He may decide to return to the EPP Group - which would be a major boost to the main centre-right formation, as it would give it a member from each EU member state.

The immediate impact on the ECR Group is that Mr Kaminski now takes the Group’s leadership, which had been expected to go to a British Conservative (by far the biggest delegation in the ECR Group). Timothy Kirkhope and Geoffrey van Orden, the two (British) candidates for the position, stood down in the wake of Mr Kaminski’s defeat in the vice-presidential vote. Keep reading…

As expected, Jerzy Buzek (EPP, Poland) has been elected as President of the European Parliament on Tuesday morning (by 555 votes to 89). Keep reading…

The German SPD delegation met last night to decide on who will be the Chair of the environment committee for this parliament.

It confirmed that Jo Leinen will be Chair of the committee for the first two-and-a-half years of the parliament. Matthias Groote (also Socialists & Democrats, Germany) will take the chair from the beginning of 2012 to the end of this parliament.

1630 update:

Latest news on the EP committee Chairs appears on our ‘Key positions‘ page - with the latest update of the list of committee and delegation Chairs as follows (note that with negotiations ongoing, nothing will be confirmed until the committees hold their constituent meetings on 16 July in Strasbourg and 20 July in Brussels) Keep reading…

The European Voice reported this morning that German MEPs have taken control of the Parliament’s legislative committees - but that is only half the story. Have the Socialists & Democrats pulled off something of a coup in their choice of committees? Keep reading…

Having (almost) decided on the split of committees and nomination of Chairs, the European Parliament’s committees will begin work next week in Strasbourg, and continue in Brussels on 20 July. Keep reading…

Last update at 1730:

The leaders of the European Parliament’s political Groups and national delegations have been meeting in Brussels in the week beginning 6 July to negotiate who will take Chairs of the Parliament’s committees. Keep reading…

From Commissioners and ministers to models and television presenters, the new European Parliament features a range of personalities.

You can find short profiles of a selection of the new (and returning) MEPs on the ‘Who’s Who - the new MEPs’ page.

With Graham Watson, the Liberal candidate for the presidency of the European Parliament, deciding to withdraw from the race on the morning of the EP Presidential Debate, Jerzy Buzek (EPP) and Eva-Britt Svensson (GUE/NGL) were quizzed on their plans on Wednesday 8 July in the only public debate to be held ahead of the plenary vote in Strasbourg on 14 July.

To read our ‘tweets’ from the debate @bmbrussels and the reaction from other Tweeters, click here. Video highlights will be on TheNewEP.eu later.