Jean-Claude Juncker is a Luxembourgish politician who served as the 21st Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and 12th President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also served as Finance Minister from 1989 to 2009 and President of the Eurogroup from 2005 to 2013.
Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, is a British Labour politician who served as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and First Vice President of the European Commission in the Barroso Commission from 2009 to 2014.
Martin John Callanan, Baron Callanan is a British Conservative Party politician. He was Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North East England from 1999 to 2014 and Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group from 2011 to 2014. Callanan failed his bid to win re-election in the 2014 European Parliament elections, becoming the first sitting chairman of a European parliamentary group to lose his seat. On 8 August 2014, it was announced that he would be made a Conservative life peer in the House of Lords.
Richard James Ashworth is a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England for Change UK. He formerly sat in the European Parliament for the Conservative Party, and was that Party's leader there from March 2012 to November 2013. He served as an MEP from 2004 to 2019.
Anna Cecilia Malmström is a Swedish politician who served as European Commissioner for Trade from 2014 to 2019. She previously served as European Commissioner for Home Affairs from 2010 to 2014 and Minister for European Union Affairs from 2006 to 2010. She was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Sweden from 1999 to 2006.
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.
Manfred Weber is a German politician who has served 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 in Bavaria (CSU), part of the European People's Party.
The Ditchley Foundation is a foundation that holds conferences, with a primary focus on British-American relations. It is based at Ditchley Park near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. It was established as a privately funded charity in 1958 by philanthropist Sir David Wills.
Alexander Jesse Norman is a British Conservative Party politician, who has served as Minister of State for Decarbonisation and Technology since October 2022. He previously served as Minister of State for the Americas and the Overseas Territories from September to October 2022. He served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2021. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hereford and South Herefordshire since 2010.
The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union, from 22 to 25 May 2014.
Sir Julian Beresford King is a British diplomat and civil servant who served as the final British European Commissioner from 2016 to 2019, having previously served as the British ambassador to Ireland (2009–2012) and France (2016).
The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country should remain a member of, or leave, the European Union (EU). It was organised and facilitated through the European Union Referendum Act 2015 and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU. Although the referendum was legally non-binding, the government of the time promised to implement the result.
Věra Jourová is a Czech politician and lawyer who has been the Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency since 1 December 2019 and previously served as the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality from 2014 to 2019. She served as a Member of the Chamber of Deputies between 2013 and 2014 and as the Czech Minister for Regional Development in 2014.
Ian James Duncan, Baron Duncan of Springbank is a Scottish politician serving as a deputy speaker in the House of Lords. A member of the Conservative Party, he was formerly Minister for Climate Change in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and minister in the Northern Ireland Office. He initially joined the UK Government as a Scotland Office minister following the 2017 UK general election. Duncan was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Scotland from 2014 to 2017. He is the only minister to have served in each of the UK Government's territorial offices.
The Juncker Commission was the European Commission in office from 1 November 2014 to 30 November 2019. Its president was Jean-Claude Juncker, who presided over 27 other commissioners. In July 2014, Juncker was officially elected to succeed José Manuel Barroso, who completed his second five-year term in that year.
Events in the year 2014 in the European Union.
British prime minister David Cameron reshuffled the Conservative members of his coalition government on 15 July 2014. The reshuffle, intended to strengthen his party's position in advance of the 2015 general election, had been long anticipated, as Cameron had maintained an unusually high level of stability amongst the senior ranks of his government, with only one prior reshuffle of significance, and many ministers having remained in place since their election in 2010. The reshuffle also featured the appointment of a new European Commissioner representing the United Kingdom, as the term of Lady Ashton was set to expire later in 2014.
The European Union (Referendum) Bill 2013–14 was a private member's bill of the Parliament of the United Kingdom designed to make provision for a referendum on membership of the European Union to be held in 2017 following renegotiation of terms between the European Union and the United Kingdom government. The bill ceased to be considered by Parliament after January 2014 and did not become law. However, a subsequent bill with the same objective, the European Union Referendum Act 2015, was later introduced to the House of Commons by the newly elected Conservative government in May 2015 was passed and received royal assent on 17 December 2015.
Martin Selmayr is a European civil servant from Germany who was Secretary-General of the European Commission from 2018 to 2019 and chief of staff to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker from 2014 to 2018. During his time in the Juncker Commission, Selmayr was widely described as one of the most influential figures within the European Union. After taking office as secretary-general, he was described in a debate in the European Parliament as "the most powerful bureaucrat in the world." A resident of Brussels since 2000, he is a member of the Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V) party of Belgium. He is considered by many to be close to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and its leadership, but the European Commission said he has never been a member of that party.
Brexit negotiations in 2017 took place between the United Kingdom and the European Union for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union following the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum on 23 June 2016. The negotiating period began on 29 March 2017 when the United Kingdom served the withdrawal notice under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. The period for negotiation stated in Article 50 is two years from notification, unless an extension is agreed. In March 2019, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Theresa May and European Leaders negotiated a two-week delay for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to agree upon The Government's Brexit Treaty, moving the date from 29 March 2019 to 12 April 2019. Negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union regarding Brexit began in June 2017.
