European Commissioner

A European Commissioner is a member of the 28-member European Commission. Each Member within the Commission holds a specific portfolio, and the Commission is led by the President of the European Commission. In simple terms they are the equivalent of national ministers.

Each Commissioner is first nominated by their member state in consultation with the Commission President, although the President holds little practical power to force a change in candidate. The more capable the candidate is, the more likely the Commission President will assign them a powerful portfolio, the distribution of which is entirely at his discretion. The President's team is then subject to hearings at the European Parliament which will question them and then vote on their suitability as a whole. If members of the team are found to be inappropriate, the President must then reshuffle the team or request a new candidate from the member state or risk the whole Commission being voted down. As Parliament cannot vote against individual Commissioners there is usually a compromise whereby the worst candidates are removed but minor objections are put aside so the Commission can take office. Once the team is approved by parliament, it is formally put into office by the European Council ().

It should be noted however that although Members of the Commission are allocated between member-states they do not represent their states; instead they are supposed to act in European interests. Normally a member-state will nominate someone of the same political party as that which forms the government of the day. There are exceptions such as Member of the Commission Burke (of Fine Gael) was nominated by Taoiseach Haughey (of Fianna Fáil), or where larger states had two seats, they often went to the two major parties such as in the United Kingdom.

Partly due to the member-state selection procedure, only 9 of the current 28 Members are women and no ethnic minorities have ever served on a Commission to date. Peter Mandelson (2004 to October 2008) was the first openly gay Commissioner. The first female Commissioners were Christiane Scrivener and Vasso Papandreou in the 1989 Delors Commission.

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