The stakes remain high inside the EU’s ‘engine room’

EUobserver takes a deep dive into the workings and new chairs of every single European Parliament committee for the new 2024-2029 session, in a series of articles first published in our print magazine of October 2024

With a more fragmented and polarised European Parliament now rolling into its 10th term, we aim to revisit the roles that the committees play in Europe’s governance, as we first did back in 2019. 

Anyone familiar with the Brussels Bubble understands that the political weight of the parliament’s committees is often underestimated. 

But these political bodies are a key piece of the legislative change puzzle, and their chairs, often the target of lobbyists, largely stay out of the limelight though, on rare occasions, receive serious and merited attention.

This is why we reached out to all committee chairs and asked them about their priorities for the next five years, as well as their main concerns — because it is expected to be a complex legislative term, with clashes both within and between the committees across nearly all areas.

When you put all their responses together, this provides a complete overview of the critical topics that will dominate the political landscape in 2024-2029.

Will the EU continue to walk the talk established over the previous five years? 

As their political priorities and work programmes start to bite, the answer to this question also hinges on whether the European Parliament will play a stronger role in policy-making.

For some committee chairs, the next five years will be all about the implementation of existing rules, others advocate for revision and adjustments, and some want to push for even more ambitious rules.  

While the priorities of the EU seem to have shifted in the name of competitiveness, it becomes clear when reading through the words of the committee chairs that the EU still faces unprecedented challenges.

Be it Russia’s war in Ukraine or the explosion of tensions in the Middle East, a potential trade war with China, inflation, the fight against climate change, the democratic backsliding of certain member states, the externalisation of migration, or the rise of artificial intelligence, Europe needs to rise to the task.

Internal issues such as ageing populations, migration, defence, and taxation still raise many problems, while Europe is still trying to find the right answers to how to increase productivity, expand fiscal space, and reduce dependencies on countries such as China or the US.

The stakes remain very high, and only time and political will will reveal whether Europe is truly up to the task.