The team of elected Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was officially approved by the European Parliament on 22 October (the 699 MEPs voted 423 for, 209 against, with 67 abstentions) and by the European Council on 23 October following a qualified majority vote. The new Commission will enter into office on 1 November until 31 October 2019.
In line with requests made by the European Parliament, several portfolios have been adapted: Tibor Navracsics from Hungary is now in charge of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, and Elzbieta Bienkowska, who has been appointed Internal Market, will also deal with Space Policy. In addition to Migration and Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos from Greece will be in charge of Citizenship (initially allocated to Navracsics).
In front of the European Parliament, Juncker also confirmed that the issue of medicines would return to the portfolio of the Directory General for Health, following strong reaction from the European Parlement and civil society organisations dealing with health issues (AGE co-signed EPHA’s letter to Juncker on this topic).
In a press release, we welcomed some of change in this new Commission and stressed the need for strengthened cooperation between relevant Directorate Generals on major multi sectorial societal issues such as demographic ageing.
Read the European Commission's press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1192_en.htm
The final structure of the new Commission can be downloaded following this link: http://ec.europa.eu/about/juncker-commission/docs/structure_en.pdf
