The 9th legislature of the European Parliament will be starting in Strasbourg on 2nd July. After the Ode to Joy, the 751 MEPs will prepare the election of the President of the Parliament, then that of the Vice-Presidents, planned for 3rd July. On 3rd July MEPs will adopt a decision regarding the number of members of the permanent parliamentary committees. On 4th July the questeurs will be elected prior to the debate with the Commission and the European Council regarding the results of the European Council on 20th and 21st June.

On 1st July the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected the appeal made by the Catalan secessionists Carles Puigdemont and Antoni Comin to oblige the European Parliament to allow them their seat in the hemicycle on 2nd July. The President of the Court deemed that Parliament had to use the results that had officially been declared by the Member States, without giving an opinion about their validity. C. Puigdemont and A. Comín are not on the list of MEPs elected in May by Spain due to their absence from the obligatory swearing in session that takes place before the Spanish Electoral Commission. The President of the Court therefore deemed that he could not consider the two politicians as having been officially declared elected.

Two European commissioners, Andrus Ansip from Estonia, vice-president of the Commission with responsibility for the digital market, and Corina Creţu from Romania, responsible for regional policy, will give up their posts to sit in the European Parliament following their election in May. The President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, informed the Council of this and, with a concern for economy, asked that they should not be replaced for the end of the mandate. Two other elected commissioners, Valdis Dombrovskis from Latvia, vice-president for the euro and social dialogue, and Mariya Gabriel from Bulgaria, responsible for the digital economy and society, decided to keep their positions and will not sit in Parliament. Finally, Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the Commission, has not yet said whether or not he will sit in Parliament because he is still the candidate for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats for the position of President of the European Commission.

The liberals and centrists group at the European Parliament, formerly the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), renamed Renew Europe, elected Dacian Ciolos as their leader on 19^th June. A former European commissioner and former Prime Minister of Romania, he won 65 votes from the group’s 108 MEPs. The group’s vice-presidents are Iskra Mihaylova (Bulgaria), Katalin Cseh (Hungary), Frédérique Ries (Belgium), Morten Lokkegaard (Denmark), Luis Garicano (Spain) and Dominique Riquet (France).

On 18th June, MEP Iratxe Garcia was elected as chair of the Socialists and Democrats group (S&D), which is the second largest in the European Parliament, with 153 seats. She no longer had any rival since the group’s former chairperson, Udo Bullmann from Germany, had withdrawn his candidacy the previous day.  I. Garcia, a member of the Spanish socialist workers’ party, has been a member of the European Parliament since 2004.

Andrus Ansip, vice-president of the European Commission and commissioner for the digital single market, announced on 17th June that he will leave his job at the Commission on 1st July to sit in the European Parliament. A. Ansip was elected as an MEP in Estonia at the May elections, on the liberal oriented Reform Party list.

On 17th June the Spanish electoral commission declared vacant the seats at the European Parliament won by Catalan separatists Oriol Junqueras, Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín, due to their failure to take the oath that is obligatory in order to be able to sit. On 14th June the Spanish Supreme Court had refused to release temporarily O. Junqueras, imprisoned since 2017 for his role in the Catalonia independence attempt, in order to take the oath. On 17th June the electoral commission stated that a document lodged by the lawyer of C. Puigdemont and T. Comin to prove that they had taken the oath in front of a notary in Belgium, where they are in exile, did not enable their election to be validated.

The Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group, which comprises the far-right parties at the European Parliament, has been renamed “Identity and Democracy” and will include 73 MEPs. From 9 different countries, these MEPs are mainly affiliated to far-right parties in Italy and France: The League (28 MEPs) and the National Rally (22 MEPs). The group will also include members of the German AfD, the Belgian Flemish Interest party (VB), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the Czech Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), the True Finns, the Danish People’s Party and the Estonian EKRE party. The group has now doubled compared to the previous parliament, in which it had 36 members. Identity and Democracy has now selected its chairman and vice-chairman, respectively Marco Zanni from Italy and Frenchman Nicolas Bay.

The liberals group at the European Parliament, previously known as the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) chose a new name for itself on 12th June: “Renew Europe”, a title that gets close to the idea of “European Renaissance” put forward by French President Emmanuel Macron. The name change was driven by French MEPs from La République en Marche, the leading delegation in the group, which should have around 110 seats and is the third largest group at the European Parliament.

On 12th June, Ska Keller from Germany and Philippe Lamberts from Belgium were re-elected as co-presidents of the Greens/EFA group, which has now become the fourth largest group at the European Parliament, with 75 MEPs. Ska Keller was the Greens/EFA candidate for presidency of the European Commission during the European elections campaign.

Alyn Smith from Britain, Bas Eickhout from the Netherlands, Gwendoline Delbos Corfield from France, Alice Bah Kuhnke from Sweden, Terry Reintke from Germany, Molly Scott Cato from Britain and Ernest Urtasun from Spain have been elected as the Group’s Vice-Presidents.