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Jean Claude Juncker will formally be voted in as President of the European Commission on July 15th.
He has already met leading MEPs to outline his policy agenda and has been outlining (again) his policy agenda. On July 8th before S&D MEPs he confirmed that the next Commissioner for Economic Affairs and the Euro will come from the Socialist family. Leading contenders for this are the current eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, and Pierre Moscovici, an ex-finance minister of France.
In the Parliament, a grand coalition of the main centre-right and centre-left groups is putting together a coalition agreement in a bid to establish control over the work of the European Union for the next five years. Leading MEPs from the EPP and the S&D group are drafting a coalition agreement that is supposed to include specific policies, on the model of the agreement between the two parties in Germany’s governing coalition. Liberal MEPs from the ALDE group are also involved in the discussions, as ALDE, although no longer the Parliament’s third-biggest group, seeks to leverage influence from the desire of the two main parties for stability.
The coalition agreement responds to an invitation issued by national leaders from the EU’s member states at their summit last Friday (27 June).
European Voice adds:
'The Council’s priorities were not detailed. The groups in the Parliament are aiming at greater precision. Paulo Rangel, a vice-chairman of the EPP group, the largest in the Parliament, said that while there had been formal coalitions in the past – including during the second Barroso administration – they had not taken the form of a written commitment to particular policies. Rangel said that negotiating the programme was “difficult”, but that the “key test” for the grand coalition would be the nomination of national members of the next college of commissioners and the distribution of portfolios.
Claude Moraes, a UK member of the S&D group, who will chair the Parliament’s civil-liberties committee, said: “The real test now is going to be legislation. There are a lot of difficult values issues and economics issues where the EPP and S&D have had a gap. Otherwise what would be the point of having the EPP and the S&D? Suddenly we have to co-operate.”
Juncker’s endorsement by the Parliament, if it goes through, will be followed by a meeting of the member states’ leaders in Brussels the next day, at which they will decide the next president of the European Council, foreign policy chief and possibly chair of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers.
Rangel said: “I wouldn’t exclude that the president of the Council comes from ALDE, so this agreement is surely broader than we might imagine. But it is also something that is under construction. It’s not a text that is already passed.” The centre-left is laying claim to both the Council president and the foreign policy chief.'
Meanwhile, key committee chairs have been confirmed. The ECON committee, as widely expected, goes to Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy). In a more surprising move, the intermal market committee IMCO goes to an ECR member, Vicky Ford from the UK.