The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union, the one in charge of proposing legislation to the Parliament and the Council and of enforcing it, implementing decisions and ensuring the compliance with the EU treaties.
In this particular sense, the Commission is responsible of taking a country before the European Court of Justice if it doesn’t comply with the European treaties and European law.
The Commission is composed by one Commissioner from each country who nonetheless do not represent their country’s government, but act in a neutral way. One of the Commissioners acts as President of the Commission and is assisted by a number of Vice Presidents. The President is Ursula von der Leyen, who belongs to the EPP family.
She succeeded Jean-Claude Juncker, who has been President of the European Commission from 2014 to November 2019, and José Manuel Barroso who has been President of the European Commission from 2004 to 2014.
The antecedents of the current European Commission can be traced back to the Commission of the European Economic Community, which first met in 1958. Since then, five Presidents of the Commission can be related to the EPP family. Although the EPP was not founded until 1976, the first President of the Commission Walter HALLSTEIN (CDU), Franco Maria MALFATTI (CD) and François-Xavier ORTOLI (RPR) all belonged to national parties that later joined the EPP.
The EPP holds regular meetings with the Commissioners belonging to the political family (10 out of 27 in the current Commission) and some of them are attached to the activities of the party being EPP Vice Presidents or chairing EPP Ministerial Meetings.
EPP Group
The Group of the European People’s Party (EPP Group) is the largest in the European Parliament. It brings together centre and centre-right pro-European political forces from the Member States of the EU, coming together to advance the goal of a more competitive and democratic Europe, closer to its citizens, and a social market economy.
EPP Group official website
Committee of the Regions
The European People’s Party has the largest political Group in the Committee of the Regions (CoR). Chaired by Olgierd Geblewicz (Civic Platform), the EPP Group is the CoR’s driving force in the EU decision making process.
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Manifesto 2012
The EPP Manifesto, also adopted at the 2012 EPP Congress in Bucharest, outlines the basic principles of the Party summary.
The EPP Manifesto, also adopted at the 2012 EPP Congress in Bucharest, outlines the basic principles of the Party summarising who we are, what our values are, what challenges are we facing and what vision we have for the future. The Manifesto was developed in parallel to the EPP Platform document within the EPP Working Group 1 for “European Policy”.
Platform
The EPP Platform is the core programme of our party outlining our main values, explaining the challenges our society is facing and presenting our vision for the future of European Union.
The EPP Platform is the core programme of our party outlining our main values, explaining the challenges our society is facing and presenting our vision for the future of European Union.
The Party Platform was developed in EPP Working Group 1 for “European Policy” chaired by EPP President Wilfried MARTENS ?and EPP Vice President Peter HINTZE. The Working Group consists of delegates of EPP member parties who prepared and worked?on this document for more than two years and received input?from the drafting committee as well as senior and young experts. The document was adopted at the 2012 EPP Congress in Bucharest, thus replacing the Basic Programme of Athens from 1992.
