‘All EU Need to Know’: The New EU

The ‘New EU’ is taking shape in the aftermath of the 2019 European Elections, with a new group of EU leaders emerging to guide the Union through a critical time in its development.

The European Council proposes nominees for several crucial leadership roles, with criteria laid out by EU treaties. These include geography, demographics, and political and gender balance. Ideally, large and small Member States should be equally represented. Incumbent President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, oversaw the steering of deliberations throughout the negotiation process. Deciding on the evening of 2 July, deliberations between leaders were quicker this time around; in 2014, leaders took until August to come to a decision.

Unlike other EU institutions, the European Parliament is not granted a say over the appointment of the President of the European Council, with the Council electing a president by a qualified majority for a two-and-a-half-year term, renewable once thereafter. After four summits and over 50 hours of negotiations, the European Council selected Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as Tusk’s successor. As head of Belgium’s coalition Government formed in 2014, he was one of the country’s youngest ever prime ministers.

On 16 July, the European Parliament approved the Council’s nomination of the then German Minister of Defence, Ursula von der Leyen, by 383 votes out of 747. She is a former German Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and Minister of Labour and Social Affairs.

Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde was the Council’s chosen candidate to replace Mario Draghi as President of the European Central Bank, the central bank for the Eurozone. Lagarde was previously the first female French Finance and Economy Minister.

The Council have also nominated the current Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Josep Borrell Fontelles for the position of High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, who leads the European External Action Service. He previously served as an MEP in the Socialist Group from 2004 to 2019 and as President of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007.

Similar to the process of the European Council, the Parliament selects its own President. On 3 June 2019, David-Maria Sassoli, an S&D MEP since 2009, succeeded fellow Italian Antonio Tajani in this role, obtaining the support of 345 MEPs. A journalist by profession, he was first elected as a Partito Democratico MEP in 2009 and previously served as a Vice-President of the Parliament.