Date: Thursday 28 May 2015
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Nereo Peñalver García, Sir Julian Priestley, Professor, Simon Hix, Manfred Weber
Chair: Anthony Teasdale

One year ago Europeans went to the polls to elect their MEPs. For the first time they had a say in who should be the next President of the Commission. Against all odds, heads of government eventually accepted EP demands that Jean-Claude Juncker should be the next President. This was a parliamentary putsch and is narrated by Nereo Peñalver and Julian Priestley in their book, The Making of a European President. But big questions remain - were voters aware that they could influence the choice of head of Europe's executive? Will this lead to undue politicisation of the Commission? What really changed with Juncker's election? How could this process be better organised in 2019?

Nereo Peñalver is a European Union official, currently working at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. Previously he served as adviser to European politicians such as Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, and Josep Borrell, former President of the European Parliament. He also worked for senior EU officials and at the EU delegation in Tunisia. He has a Masters from the College of Europe in Bruges and from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Julian Priestley was Secretary General of the European Parliament from 1997 to 2007, and is a former Secretary General of the Socialist group at the EP. He studied at Balliol, Oxford and is a past President of the Oxford Union. He has written extensively on European and British politics. His books include, 'Six battles that shaped Europe's Parliament' (2008) and 'Europe's Parliament; People, Politics and Places', (with Stephen Clark) (2012). He was knighted in 2007. He was special adviser to Martin Schulz' presidential campaign in 2014.

Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Head of the Department of Government at LSE. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Manfred Weber is Chairman of the EPP Group in the European Parliament. He is a German politician and Member of the European Parliament for Bavaria with the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, part of the European People's Party. He sits on the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

Anthony Teasdale is Visiting Senior Fellow at the European Institute, LSE, and Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS).

The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector. Its disciplinary range is unrivalled: it currently has 25 permanent academic members of staff and 22 distinguished visiting scholars drawn from the fields of politics, economics, geography, history, political economy, law, philosophy, sociology and international relations. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009.

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