candidates

This week, the European Parliament will start interviewing the candidates for the new European Commission – and all Europeans can follow it live via streaming.

This infographic presents an overview of the scheduled Hearings of Commissioners-designate by the parliamentary committees. The hearings will be held in the József Antall building, in rooms 2Q2 and 4Q2. Each hearing is due to last three hours.

Hearings of Commissioners-designate seem like a standard practice in modern democracies, however, it was not until the Maastricht Treaty that the European Parliament finally obtained the power to formally vote on the appointment of the Commission as a whole.

The first such hearings took place in 1995. Interestingly enough these were hearings of the Commissioners-designate of the first EU Commission that four years later resigned due to allegations of corruption. A democratic process with an ever stronger supervisory role of the EP was born. Since then the EP endorsed four EU Commissions. It was not always easy for Commissioner-designates to pass this “job interview”. And this time, the college of Jean Claude Juncker will have only 10 days to prepare for the hearings.

Source: EPRS