Roberta Metsola will lead a new European Parliament of 720 members from the EU’s 27 member states. With two new far-right groups, the biggest drop in female representation since 1979 and an average age of 50, how will the balance of the chamber change? And how will this affect new legislation?
Last week all the committees in the European Parliament held their respective constitutive meetings, electing a chair and four vice-chairs to lead the 20 committees and subcommittees that make up the institution.
This was the first challenge for Patriots of Europe, the group founded by Viktor Orbán, which counts 84 MEPs, making it the third-largest group in the hemicycle.
The centre-right coalition groups that supported von der Leyen’s reappointment, the European People’s Party (EPP), Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Renew Europe, maintained its cordon sanitaire, resulting in Orban’s group losing two chairmanships it had earmarked on committees on Transport and Tourism (TRAN) and Culture and Education (CULT).
As a result, Elissavet Vozemberg-Vrionidi (EPP/Greece) became chair in TRAN and Nela Riehl (Greens/Germany) was elected for CULT.
The Patriots also lost vice chairs in the agriculture, development, environment, legal affairs, civil and home affairs, and budget control committees.
The committees are now ready to work – but not before taking a holiday – and will hold their first meetings during the first week of September.
As well as the increased number of MEPs who will sit in the hemicycle in the new mandate, the committees and subcommittees have seen their own changes in composition.
The Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) remains the largest committee, but is now joined by Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). Both will have 90 members, an increase of two and 12 members respectively.
ENVI will be led by Socialist Italian Antonio Decaro, while the ITRE chair is Polish Borys Budka from the EPP.
The entrance of Patriots of Europe and ultra-far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) to the hemicycle has shifted the political balance of certain committees. In agriculture and rural development (AGRI), the composition is predominantly right-leaning. The EPP, European Conservatives and Reformists, Patriots for Europe, and ESN hold 25 out of 48 seats.
Both in ENVI and ITRE the same coalition accounts for 48 out of the 90 seats.
Where are the women?
Following the European elections in June, the new Parliament experienced the biggest percentage drop in female representation since the first direct elections in 1979. Women will make up 38.5% of MEPs – 277 out of 720 – 2.1% fewer than in the previous legislature, when they held 46% of seats.
National variations are stark: while in France, Sweden and Finland women represent more than 50% of MEPs, in Cyprus the number sits below 15%.
Once elected, where will these 277 women sit? What positions will they hold? This new mandate has already put women in three of the main jobs in Brussels: Roberta Metsola as President of the Parliament, Ursula von der Leyen in the European Commission and Kaja Kallas to be confirmed as High Representative.
But is this a reflection of the institutions as a whole?
On Monday (22 July), at the first Conference of Presidents, where the leaders of the Parliament’s political groups met to discuss committee chairmanships, Manfred Weber, President of the EPP, called for the principle of gender parity in the dispersal of committee chairmanships to be abandoned. This was agreed for the fourth vice-chair.
Following the meeting, however, the agricultural (AGRI) and economic (ECON) committees, decided to postpone the vote on the fourth member of the bureau in an attempt to achieve gender balance after the three vice-chairs had already gone to men.
In total, of the 20 committees and subcommittees of the Parliament, only seven chairmanships went to female candidates.
The committee with the biggest share of women is FEMM which focuses on women’s rights and gender equality, while the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) is clearly dominated by male MEPs.
And the young people?
Together with women, young people represent another large underrepresented group in the chamber.
The average age of the Parliament is now 50 years old, the same as five years ago. Both the youngest and oldest MEPs are part of The Left. Austrian Lena Schilling, 23 years old, will be part of the ENVI committees while Italian Leoluca Orlando at 76 will sit in the Committee of Foreign Affairs (AFET).
The country with the oldest lawmakers is Luxembourg, with an average age of 60. By contrast, Malta has the youngest set of politicians, with an average age of 41.
The EP has a place for everyone
Unlike other professions, MEPs can join the Parliament from all sorts of backgrounds.
Among the 720 people sitting in the hemicycle for the next five years, there are not only former European Commissioners and ex-prime ministers but also professional football players, influencers and singers.
Vytenis Andriukaitis (Lithuania/S&D) was the EU’s health commissioner from 2014 to 2019 and is now back to the institutions to sit in the ENVI and SANT committees.
More recently, Virginijus Sinkevičius (Lithuania/Greens) served as Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Commissioner up until July. He will now be part of the transport and tourism committee.
Also in the previous commission, Adina Vălean (EPP) was the Romanian Commissioner for transport. She resigned her position after being elected to Parliament where she will sit in IMCO, the committee on internal market and consumer protection.
They are not the only ones coming from strong political positions. Ex-Prime Ministers Elio di Rupo (S&D) of Belgium and Andrius Kubilius (EPP) of Lithuania, have also joined the Parliament.
But the Parliament has a place for everyone, including the first woman to score a hat trick in a football World Cup.
Carolina Morace (The Left), an ex-professional footballer, joined the Italian Five Star Movement party in 2024 and was elected as a member of the European Parliament, she will be part of the committee dealing with women’s rights.
András Kulja (EPP) is also a well-known name in Hungary, where he was a surgeon before jumping into European politics. Kulja has an account on TikTok in which he talks about medicine and has over 300 thousand followers. He was elected as vice-chair of the environment, and he will also sit on the subcommittee dealing with public health.
