VALENCIA (EP). The results of the European elections that will be known this Sunday night will not only redefine the distribution of seats between the main political forces in the European Unionwith a foreseeable victory for the right and a rise in populism and extremism, but will also mark the beginning of negotiations between the capitals to decide the distribution of senior positions in the main community institutions, that is, the European Comissionhe European Council and the European Parliament.
The new European Chamber that emerges from the polls will not be formally constituted until Tuesday, July 16, when the first plenary session of the new legislature begins in Strasbourg (France) and the name of who will assume the presidency of the Parliament is put to a vote. institution –at least the first half of the five years of the legislature– and the 14 vice-presidencies are elected.
However, that name will be part of the balance that governments will have to agree on in the previous weeks to ensure that senior EU officials (‘top jobs’ in community jargon) respect a complex combination of political, geographical or gender balances.
The ‘popular’, whom all polls show as winners of Sunday’s elections, aspire to keep their candidate, the German Ursula von der Leyen, at the head of the European Commission, which will condition the requirements that will be put in place to relieve Roberta Metsola, also ‘popular’, at the head of the European Parliament, and the liberal Charles Michel when he leaves the European Council in December.
The heads of state and government of the European Union will meet first on June 17 at an informal dinner in Brussels to agree on the bases of the distribution, although in principle it is not expected that the names of the new members will emerge from that meeting. top jobs’, but rather the architecture of the new Commission and other balances to take into account.
The formal summit that will bring them together again on June 27 and 28, again in the community capital, is the moment in which it is expected that the names of the candidates with real possibilities of winning sufficient support will be put on the table. the European Council, which is the one who has the power to appoint them.
The initial calendar provided for the presidency of the European Commission to be submitted to the vote of the plenary session of the European Parliament in its second session, in this case in the month of September, but now it is no longer ruled out that the vote is brought forward to the constituent session of July if the person elected has sufficiently solid support to guarantee that he or she will obtain the necessary majority in the European Parliament. The moment of the vote, in any case, will be decided by the Conference of Presidents, which will meet a week before the first plenary session to set the agenda for the session.
Group distribution
In any case, as of the Monday after 9-J, negotiations will also begin for the formation of the European political groups that will make up the chamber, which parties and MEPs will compose them and which will be the parliamentary commissions.
It is expected that a European Chamber that is more fragmented by extremism will emerge from these elections and it remains to be seen if the extreme right forces manage to unite in a single bloc or remain divided into two or more groups as happened in the last legislature, when seven groups were created. : European People’s Party (EPP), Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew –which includes Ciudadanos and PNV–, Greens/European Free Alliance, European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) –where Vox is located- -, Identity and Democracy (ID) and the Left – which frames Podemos and Izquierda Unida -.
Those MEPs who are left without a group become part of the ‘non-registered’, which has 62 members, seven more since the recent expulsion of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) formation of Identity and Democracy after its head of the list For the Europeans, Maximilian Krah, believed that it could not be “automatically” considered that everyone in the SS of Nazi Germany was criminal.
Also belonging to the ‘non-registered’ are the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, and his party, Junts per Catalunya, which was left without a group in the last distribution, or Fidesz, the formation of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, after that the EPP suspended its membership due to the Budapest attacks against the EU.
Each group needs at least 23 members and to represent at least a quarter of the 27 member states and, although there is no deadline and the rules of the European Parliament do not prevent a group from being formed (or dissolved) in the middle of the legislature, those who want be taken into account when the commissions are distributed in the first session, they must already be constituted.
Commission Presidency
Once the distribution of the European Chamber has been decided, the person nominated by the Twenty-Seven to preside over the European Commission must also obtain the support of Parliament by an absolute majority, that is, at least 361 of the 720 active MEPs, in a secret vote that remains It remains to be determined whether it will be held in September or brought forward to July.
Immediately afterwards, the College of Commissioners, with a representative proposed by each Member State to the elected president of the Commission, must appear one by one before the parliamentary committees of their areas of responsibility, so the new Community Executive is not expected to begin its journey until the end of October or beginning of November.
