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The European Parliament on Thursday appointed Guy Verhofstadt as its chair to lead the Conference on the Future of Europe, Parliament officials told POLITICO.
Verhofstadt, a liberal MEP and former Belgian prime minister, will lead a seven-person slate for the Parliament that includes six men and two Euroskeptic MEPs, they added.
The appointment comes two weeks after the EU approved a plan to launch a Conference on the Future of Europe, a discussion forum meant to give citizens a chance to shape how the EU will look in the future. The conference will be run by an “Executive Board,” featuring delegations from three EU branches — the Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the EU. Each delegation will consist of three “representatives” and up to four “observers.”
In addition to Verhofstadt, the Parliament’s representatives will include Manfred Weber, the leader of the center-right European People’s Party, and Iratxe García, who leads the center-left Socialists and Democrats. Verhofstadt will serve as the group’s point person, coordinating its work on the conference.
Parliament President David Sassoli approved the choices after a formal request from the liberal Renew Europe group.
The move is widely viewed as a consolation prize for Verhofstadt, who was the Parliament’s initial choice to lead the entire conference. But the proposal sparked a squabble between EU institutions over whether Verhofstadt should be the singular leader, given his federalist views.
Eventually, the various institutions agreed to the power-sharing “Executive Board” arrangement, meaning Verhofstadt can only pilot the Parliament’s share of the work. Overseeing the conference as a whole will be a three-strong “Joint Presidency” — composed of the presidents of the Commission and the Parliament, as well as the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.
But the Belgian MEP will play an important role on the Executive Board, which will make consensus-based decisions about the conference’s work as it progresses, according to the joint declaration that established the initiative.
In the end, Sassoli’s decision to appoint Verhofstadt was less controversial than his decision to approve a list of Executive Board members for the conference almost exclusively composed of men.
Besides Weber, García and Verhofstadt, the Executive Board will have four observers from the Parliament: Daniel Freund, a German MEP from the Greens; Zdzislaw Krasnodębski, a Polish MEP from the right-wing Law and Justice party; Helmut Scholz, a German MEP from the far-left Die Linke party; and Gerolf Annemans, a Belgian MEP from the far-right Vlaams Belang party.
Earlier this month, Sassoli sent a letter to political group leaders urging them to include more women among their nominees for the Executive Board.
“I am deeply concerned that only days after the International Women’s Day, we are not able to live up to the very principles that we claim we defend, especially in the context of the future of Europe,” Sassoli wrote in a letter on March 10.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for Sassoli said he had approved the list because he had “no other choice than to move on” with the conference. But, the spokesperson added, the lack of gender equality “profoundly disappoints him.”
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