The European Commission (EC) is the primary executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission headed by a President. It includes an administrative body of about 32,000 European civil servants. The commission is divided into departments known as Directorates-General (DGs) that can be likened to departments or ministries each headed by a Director-General who is responsible to a Commissioner.
The president of the European Commission, also known as president of the College of Commissioners or prime commissioner, is the head of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). The president of the commission leads a cabinet of commissioners, referred to as the college. The president is empowered to allocate portfolios among, reshuffle, or dismiss commissioners as necessary. The college directs the commission's civil service, sets the policy agenda and determines the legislative proposals it produces. The commission is the only body that can propose, or draft, bills to become EU laws.
The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is the European Union's (EU) assembly of local and regional representatives that provides sub-national authorities with a direct voice within the EU's institutional framework.
The political structure of the European Union (EU) is similar to a confederation, where many policy areas are federalised into common institutions capable of making law; the competences to control foreign policy, defence policy, or the majority of direct taxation policies are mostly reserved for the twenty-seven state governments. These areas are primarily under the control of the EU's member states although a certain amount of structured co-operation and coordination takes place in these areas. For the EU to take substantial actions in these areas, all Member States must give their consent. Union laws that override State laws are more numerous than in historical confederations; however, the EU is legally restricted from making law outside its remit or where it is no more appropriate to do so at a state or local level (subsidiarity) when acting outside its exclusive competences. The principle of subsidiarity does not apply to areas of exclusive competence.
The apportionment of seats within the European Parliament to each member state of the European Union is set out by the EU treaties. According to European Union treaties, the distribution of seats is "degressively proportional" to the population of the member states, with negotiations and agreements between member states playing a role. Thus the allocation of seats is not strictly proportional to the size of a state's population, nor does it reflect any other automatically triggered or fixed mathematical formula. The process can be compared to the composition of the electoral college used to elect the President of the United States of America in that, pro rata, the smaller state received more places in the electoral college than the more populous states.
Manfred Weber is a German politician who has been serving as President of the European People's Party (EPP) since 2022 and as Leader of the EPP Group in the European Parliament since 2014. He has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany since 2004. He is a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), part of the European People's Party.
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is a German politician, serving as the 13th president of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding positions in Angela Merkel's cabinet, most recently as federal minister of defence. She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliated europarty, the European People's Party (EPP). On 7 March 2024, the EPP elected her as its Spitzenkandidat to lead the campaign for the 2024 European parliament elections. She was re-elected to head the Commission in July 2024.
Adina-Ioana Vălean is a Romanian politician who has been serving as European Commissioner for Transport under the leadership of President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen since 2019. She previously served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2007 until 2019, where she chaired of the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy in 2019.
The energy policy of the European Union focuses on energy security, sustainability, and integrating the energy markets of member states. An increasingly important part of it is climate policy. A key energy policy adopted in 2009 is the 20/20/20 objectives, binding for all EU Member States. The target involved increasing the share of renewable energy in its final energy use to 20%, reduce greenhouse gases by 20% and increase energy efficiency by 20%. After this target was met, new targets for 2030 were set at a 55% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of the European Green Deal. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU's energy policy turned more towards energy security in their REPowerEU policy package, which boosts both renewable deployment and fossil fuel infrastructure for alternative suppliers.
The national parliaments of the European Union are those legislatures responsible for each member state of the European Union (EU). They have a certain degree of institutionalised influence which was expanded under the Treaty of Lisbon to include greater ability to scrutinise proposed European Union law.
The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) is a European Union (EU) mechanism aimed at increasing direct democracy by enabling "EU citizens to participate directly in the development of EU policies", introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. This popular initiative enables one million citizens of the European Union, with a minimum number of nationals from at least seven member states, to call directly on the European Commission to propose a legal act in an area where the member states have conferred powers onto the EU level. This right to request the commission to initiate a legislative proposal puts citizens on the same footing as the European Parliament and the European Council, who enjoy this right according to Articles 225 and 241 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TEFU). The commission holds the right of initiative in the EU. The first registered ECI, Fraternité 2020, was initiated on 9 May 2012, although the first submitted ECI was One Single Tariff.
Gunnar Beck is a German academic, lawyer and sometime politician. He served as deputy legal adviser (EU) at the House of Commons in London from 2002 to 2010 and as legal adviser to the UK parliamentary delegation to the Convention on the Future of Europe from 2002 to 2004. From 2014 to 2019 he was a part-time legal and EU affairs adviser to the Alternative for Germany from 2014 to 2019 and then a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 and 2024. From 2022 to May 2024 he held the position of vice-president of the Identity & Democracy Group. He has been a reader in EU law at the SOAS, University of London since 2005 and a door tenant and practicing barrister at 1EC Chambers from 2013. Beck has both won wider public and academic acclaim, and provoked fierce criticism in response to, his work on the legal reasoning of the European Court of Justice, the legal and political aspects of the euro and migration crises and on 18th/19th century German moral and legal philosophy, especially the works of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
Lobbying in the European Union, also referred to officially as European interest representation, is the activity of representatives of diverse interest groups or lobbies who attempt to influence the executive and legislative authorities of the European Union through public relations or public affairs work. The Treaty of Lisbon introduced a new dimension of lobbying at the European level that is different from most national lobbying. At the national level, lobbying is more a matter of personal and informal relations between the officials of national authorities, but lobbying at the European Union level is increasingly a part of the political decision-making process and thus part of the legislative process. 'European interest representation' is part of a new participatory democracy within the European Union. The first step towards specialised regulation of lobbying in the European Union was a Written Question tabled by Alman Metten, in 1989. In 1991, Marc Galle, Chairman of the Committee on the Rules of Procedure, the Verification of Credentials and Immunities, was appointed to submit proposals for a Code of conduct and a register of lobbyists. Today lobbying in the European Union is an integral and important part of decision-making in the EU. From year to year lobbying regulation in the EU is constantly improving and the number of lobbyists is increasing.
The Spitzenkandidat process is the method of linking the choice of President of the Commission to the outcome of the European Parliament elections, with each major European political party nominating their candidate for Commission President prior to the Parliamentary elections. The Spitzenkandidat of the largest party would then be proposed by the European Council to the European Parliament for election to the Commission Presidency.
The ninth European Parliament was elected during the 2019 elections and sat until the tenth European Parliament was sworn in on 16 July 2024.
The von der Leyen Commission is the current European Commission, in office since 1 December 2019 and is to last until the formation of the forthcoming Second Von der Leyen Commission. It consists of one commissioner from each of the member states of the European Union – including Ursula von der Leyen, its president, who is from Germany.
Alin Cristian Mituța is a Romanian politician of REPER who has been serving as Member of the European Parliament since 2020.
Participatory democracy "is founded on the direct action of citizens who exercise some power and decide issues affecting their lives". Participatory democracy refers to mechanisms through which citizens are involved in public decision-making processes, not as an alternative to representative democracy but as a complement to it.
The Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) is a directorate-general of the European Commission created to prepare the EU for a future pandemic and to avoid the mistakes made during the EU's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first announced plans for such a body in 2020. On 15 September 2021, the EU announced the launch of HERA and the service was established as a directorate-general of the European Commission on 16 September. HERA has been operational since early 2022.
