Damien O’Reilly (ICOS)

Brussels goes quiet in August. Its holiday time and ex-pats head home for the month. But there is still a lot happening as the new Parliament and Commission continue to take shape. New MEPs have been finding their way around here since the June election, between looking for somewhere to stay, to finding committees to sit on.

There are over twenty committees spanning all areas of European policy, industry and society. The ones we keep an eye on are the Agricultural committee and the Environmental committee. These committees do the spadework when it comes to studying, amending and adopting the legislation proposals from the Commission. It is these committees that liaise with member state Ministers and the various lobby groups with an interest in the broad agrifood spectrum as pieces of legislation delicately moves through the sometimes years long legislative process.

Three Irish MEPs will sit on the Agricultural Committee or ComAgri as it is better known, Fianna Fail’s Barry Cowen, Maria Walsh of Fine Gael and Independent Luke “Ming” Flanagan. And on the Environmental Committee (ComEnvi), Sinn Feins Lynn Boylan is the sole Irish full committee member. The remaining 10 MEPs are scattered across many other committees of interest to them.

The focus now switches to the EU Commission. The next big job for the MEPs will be to act as job interviewers as the committees will have the pleasure of grilling the Commissioner candidates relevant to their committee. So, the Agricultural Committee will quiz whoever is nominated by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to be the next Agriculture Commissioner. At time of writing, the favourite for the job is the Luxembourg Commissioner Cristoph Hansen who is aligned to the European Peoples Party (EPP) of which Fine Gael are members and who would be seen as broadly supportive of farmers.

Von der Leyen herself comfortably returned as Commission President for a second term despite rumours that she would struggle to get the bare minimum MEP votes to get across the line. In the end she had well over 100 votes to spare and so she continues to command the position as arguably the most powerful politician in the EU. Right now her first job is looking for each member state to nominate a male and female candidate to chose from in order to fill her 26 Commissionerships. Ireland has already nominated Michael McGrath and might be minded telling the EU where to go with their demand of a female candidate considering that they are handing Ms von der Leyen such a senior minister.

The 4 Fine Gael MEPs were the only Irish MEPs to support her in that crucial Parliament vote last month with the 4 Fianna Fail MEPs among those not to support her. This will not go unnoticed by Ms von der Leyen. Could it impact on the quality of the post given to Micheal McGrath in the autumn? Cynics would say it will, but we will know soon enough.

Of course, that all means Mairead McGuinness’s 20-year political career in Brussels is coming to an end in November. Mairead made a big impact here and had climbed the ladder to Vice President of the European Parliament before successfully being appointed as EU Commissioner replacing Phil Hogan in the wake of “golfgate.” She was a great ally for farmers in the Commission even if her portfolio wasn’t necessarily anything to do with farming and she was always more than happy to engage with Irish co-op and farm groups visiting Brussels and listen to their concerns. Mairead wanted to stay on in the role but party politics at home meant there was no hope of that happening. She can look back at her stint in Brussels extremely positively and all eyes will be on her next move.