The Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) is a committee of the European Parliament dealing with institutional matters such as the Treaties of the European Union and the Parliament's rules of procedure. It was established in 1982, initially known as as the Committee on Institutional Affairs.
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 720 members (MEPs), after the June 2024 European elections, from a previous 705 MEPs. It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world, with an electorate of around 375 million eligible voters in 2024.
The president of the European Parliament presides over the debates and activities of the European Parliament. They also represent the Parliament within the European Union (EU) and internationally. The president's signature is required for laws initiated under co-decision and the EU budget.
David Casa is a Maltese politician and Member of the European Parliament. He is Malta's longest serving MEP, having served since June 2004. As a member of the Nationalist Party in Malta, he belongs to the European People's Party.
Anders Gunnar Hökmark is a Swedish politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 until 2019. He is member of the Moderate Party, part of the European People's Party. He previously served as Secretary of the Moderate Party from 1991 to 1999 and Member of the Riksdag (MP) for Stockholm County from 1982 to 2004.
Valdis Dombrovskis is a Latvian politician serving as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People since 2019 and European Commissioner for Trade since 2020. He previously served as European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union from 2016 to 2020 and Prime Minister of Latvia from 2009 to 2014.
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.
Othmar Karas is an Austrian politician who served as the First Vice-President of the European Parliament since January 2022, having been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 1999. He is a member of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), which in turn affiliates with the European People's Party.
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.
György Schöpflin was a Hungarian politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Hungary. He was a member of Fidesz, part of the European People's Party.
The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) is a committee of the European Parliament that is responsible for protecting civil liberties and human rights, as listed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) is a committee of the European Parliament. It has 81 full members and is currently chaired by Antonio Decaro.
The Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT) is a committee of the European Parliament. with 30 permanent members. It can be seen as the European Union's internal "political watchdog", seeking to identify undesirable developments within EU institutions and other bodies and then to elaborate constructive suggestions for improvement.
Dubravka Šuica is a Croatian politician of the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) who has been Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Democracy and Demography since 2019. She previously served as a member of the European Parliament from 2013 to 2019.
Roberta Metsola is a Maltese politician who has served as the president of the European Parliament since January 2022. She is a member of Malta's Nationalist Party (PN) and the European People's Party (EPP).
The European Conservatives and Reformists Group is a soft Eurosceptic, anti-federalist political group of the European Parliament. The ECR is the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party European political party, but also includes MEPs from other European parties and MEPs without European party affiliation.
The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is the political group in the European Parliament of the Party of European Socialists (PES). The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats was officially founded as a Socialist Group on 29 June 1953, which makes it the second oldest political group in the European Parliament after the European People's Party Group. It adopted its present-day name on 23 June 2009. Centre-left in orientation, the group mostly comprises social democratic parties and is affiliated with the Progressive Alliance and Socialist International.
Paulo Artur dos Santos Castro de Campos Rangel is a Portuguese jurist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) who has been Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2024, in the XXIV Constitutional Government, led by Luís Montenegro.
The ninth European Parliament was elected during the 2019 elections and sat until the tenth European Parliament was sworn in on 16 July 2024.
Vladimír Bilčík is a Slovak university lecturer and politician of the Slovak party Democrats. He has served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2024. During the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovakia, Bilčík ran as the leader of Democrats, as part of a coalition with Progressive Slovakia. He got 26,202 preferential votes in total.
The Conference on the Future of Europe was a proposal of the European Commission and the European Parliament, announced at the end of 2019, with the aim of looking at the medium- to long-term future of the EU and what reforms should be made to its policies and institutions. It is intended that the Conference should involve citizens, including a significant role for young people, civil society, and European institutions as equal partners and last for two years. It will be jointly organised by the European Parliament, the EU Council and the European Commission. On 19 April 2021, the multilingual digital platform of the Conference futureu.europa.eu was launched.