A candidate to preside over the Commission. The great novelty with this new European election is that the European Parliament (EP) got more power with the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. The new EP, which will have 751 members for an absolute majority of 376 votes, now has the right to veto the appointment made for the Presidency of the European Commission. This prospect isn’t really making Angela Merkel – along with a few other European leaders. States and political parties agreed that the chief candidates of the different Parliamentary groups could also run for President of the European Commission. And it is the case for the two biggest European parties: the European People’s Party (EPP, conservative), behind Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker, and the Party of European Socialists (PES-S&D) behind Germany’s Martin Schulz.
European elections: the European Parliament is more and more active based on stable majorities
On May 25, nearly 382 citizens from 28 EU Member States will go to the polls to elect, via universal suffrage, 751 Members of the European Parliament who will sit for 5 years (2014-2019). Immediately after, the European Commission’s composition will be renewed. Whereas the EU is barely out of the euro crisis, these elections will be even more important since, with the Lisbon Treaty (2009), the MEPs got more power, notably in the area of budget, and they also have to veto the appointed candidate as President of the Commission. This explains why, this time, the chief candidates of Europe’s Parliamentary groups also apply for that position. Planet Labor is giving you an analysis of the political alliances that have backed major cases this past legislative term and is also referring to the possible impact of the rise of protester votes.
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