The committee members in the European Parliament have been determined

In the plenary session of the European Parliament, which is the legislative body of the European Union (EU) with 720 members, the members of 20 parliamentary committees and 4 subcommittees for the 10th legislative term were determined.

Today, appointments were made in the European Parliament (EP), the legislative body of the EU. In the plenary session of the 720-member parliament, which is represented in proportion to the populations of EU countries, the members of the 20 parliamentary committees and 4 subcommittees for the 10th legislative term were determined. Among the appointments, it was noteworthy that former Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo and former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius were included in the 79-member Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. It is expected that German parliamentarian David McAllister, who has held the position since 2017, will continue to chair the Foreign Affairs Committee.

In the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which will work on migration policy, notable figures such as Fabrice Leggeri, who previously served as the director of the EU’s border security agency FRONTEX, and former Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilms were included.

Turkish-origin names were also included in the committee appointments. In the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, which will work on Europe’s green-friendly policies, names like former EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis and Moroccan-born Dutch parliamentarian Mohammed Chahim were included.

Engin Eroğlu, a Turkish-origin member of parliament from Germany, was appointed to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, while Taner Kabilov, who entered the parliament from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (HÖH) in Bulgaria, whose members are mostly Turkish and Muslim, was placed in the Regional Development Committee. İlhan Küçük was included in the Legal Affairs Committee.

As part of the appointments, Fidias Panayiotou, a Cypriot internet phenomenon with 2.6 million followers on an online video sharing application, was included in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, and Peter Magyar, seen as the biggest political rival of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was included in the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee.

The first committee meetings will be on July 23.

The first committee meetings, which will reflect the general outlook of the EP and will determine the presidents and vice-presidents of the committees consisting of 25 to 90 members, will be held on July 23.

The committees, which typically meet once or twice a month in Brussels to hold generally public discussions, prepare the majority of the work of the EP and enable the EP to approve topics on which consensus has been reached during the plenary sessions, thus allowing it to focus on significant political discussions. Parliamentary committees are responsible for legislative work on a wide range of issues, from foreign policy to defense and trade, culture and education to fishing and agriculture, and they will also be tasked with questioning and approving the commission members appointed to work under the presidency of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.