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Sylvie Goulard was not the only one to be defeated last week in the European Parliament. While the EPP and S&D were successful in their mission to break even with Macron’s group on the number of commissioners being rejected, the two traditional groups lost on other fronts.
The “good old grand coalition” EPP+S&D also joined forces to propose the set-up of a new special committee to investigate foreign electoral interference and disinformation in European elections. Continue Reading
Despite the rocky start of the Parliamentary vetting process, the new College of Commissioners led by Ursula von der Leyen is still expected to take office starting from November the 1st. While often sneered as ‘faceless Eurocrats’ by its staunchest critics, the College of Commissioners is mostly composed of career politicians whose task is to provide political impetus to the powerful executive machine of the EU, which is currently made up of about 30.000 civil servants. Continue Reading
If you are a researcher, a professor or a student interested in EU decision-making, we’ve got just the right opportunities for you!
Given the big number of students and researchers who regularly use our unique paid-features to verify their working hypotheses for their books, academic papers, PhD, Master or BA thesis, VoteWatch launched an exclusive academic license that will facilitate the universities’ IP-based access to our voting database and innovative tools, which generate stats for party cohesion, matching between various parties or MEPs, loyalty of individuals to their party line, comparisons between the votes of governments on specific topics, and much more to be discovered in the infographic below. Continue Reading
The confirmation process of the new College of Commissioners got off to a rocky start, after the Committee on Legal Affairs refused to green-light two Commissioners-designate (Rovana Plumb from Romania – S&D – and László Trócsányi from Hungary – EPP) for alleged conflicts of interest.
This is highly relevant for stakeholders as it showcases how the political battles ahead will look like:
1) Protection by traditional political families is now less effective
The content of the arguments used for the rejection is, of course, relevant, but since the subject is brought to the interpretation of fellow politicians (as opposed to independent judges), it is difficult to overlook the political considerations of parties. Continue Reading
VoteWatch Europe is the leading organisation that tracks and forecasts EU political developments, through a unique combination of big political data and expert insights.
Our work is built on two pillars:
1) we follow the dynamics in the EU institutions (majority building, winners and losers, cohesion of the groups) to identify the supporters, opponents and the kingmakers among the EU Parliamentarians on any given policy proposal or broader area;
2) we follow the socio-political trends across the continent (opinion polls, governments’ change) in order to forecast the changes in the balance of power in both the European Parliament and the Council, and hence the agenda and the margin of maneuver of the European Commission, on any given policy proposal. Continue Reading
*This is the second part of a series covering the political changes within EP Committees. Click here to read the first part.
The composition of EP committees aims to mirror the balance of power among political factions in the European Parliament as a whole. However, the same proportional distribution is not applied with regards to the representation of different national groups, which allows more freedom to MEPs. Continue Reading
By Piotr Maciej Kaczyński*
For many years, the size of parliamentary committees has reflected the political choices of the Parliament. The bigger the committee – the more relevant the committee, this is the common understanding. The size of the committees stems from two sources. First is their popularity with elected Members (MEPs). Continue Reading
During the first round of votes in the European Parliament, MEPs focused on foreign relations, while the legislative debate will resume after the summer. In particular, MEPs cast their votes on the EU’s approach towards the Venezuela crisis, an European Magnitisky Act and the crisis on the US-Mexico border. Notably, the side advocating for a tougher approach vis-à-vis all three seemed to get the upper hand. Continue Reading
Photo credit: ©European Union 2019, Source: EP, Marc Dossmann
The extremely small majority by which Ursula von der Leyen passed in the Parliament confirms our forecasts on what we can expect in the next 5 years in EU politics. Here are our key take-aways:
– Every MEP will count! Continue Reading
A secret ballot in the EP will decide today whether German Ursula von der Leyen will succeed Juncker as the President of the European Commission. Why is this vote secret and who is likely to benefit from that?
The practical purpose of keeping a vote secret is so that some parliamentarians can vote against candidates that their party (or European political family) publicly supports or, on the contrary, vote in favour of candidates that their own party (or European political family) publicly opposes. Continue Reading
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