Last week, we saw the nomination of the men and women who will head the European Union’s Executive arm – the European Commission – for the next five years under European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. This team will now face relevant committees in the European Parliament early in the New Year for questions before the team is subject to a vote of approval in that body on 26 January. Fleishman-Hillard’s Brussels office has assembled this excellent summary of these new leaders.

Why are these people important? As FH Brussels points out, it is the European Commission that retains the sole right of initiative to propose binding legislation that affects business across the European Union’s 27 countries across most of the policy fields that affect a wide range of public policies, including product standards and safety, energy, transport, environment, health and consumer protection, financial services and competition.

Not only will the rules they promulgate have an impact in markets from the UK and Germany to Poland and the Czech Republic, but increasingly in our globally connected world European standards are picked up and used in other jurisdictions and by global companies seeking to simplify their global supply chain.

December 2nd, 2009 by Jeff Weintraub | No Comments
Tags: European Commission · European Parliament · European Union · Jose Manuel Barroso