EU Migration Commissioner Brunner runs for EVP Vice-President

Valencia/Vienna – The EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, who hails from Austria, is running for one of the ten vice-presidential positions of the European People’s Party (EPP). At the party congress taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday in Valencia, Spain, the German CSU politician Manfred Weber is also expected to be re-elected as EPP chairman. According to the EPP, he is the only candidate for the party leadership.

Brunner’s election as one of the EPP vice-presidents is not yet certain, as there are more candidates for the position. The Bulgarian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Mariya Gabriel, the EPP group vice-chair Siegfried Muresan from Romania, Croatian EU Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, German MEP David McAllister, Polish EU representative Andrzej Halicki, and Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani are again running for EPP vice-presidency. New candidates include, in addition to Brunner, Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel, Belgian MEP Wouter Beke, former Greek Finance and Economy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis, and former Irish EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness.

The EPP is the strongest force in the European Parliament with 188 out of a total of 720 members, ahead of the Social Democratic S&D group with 136 and the right-wing group “Patriots for Europe” with 86. The EPP congress, which will also be attended by the head of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) Christian Stocker and the ÖVP delegation leader in the European Parliament, Reinhold Lopatka, is also expected to address the Russian war in Ukraine, escalating living costs, and increasing threats from populism and extremism. By choosing the location for the meeting, the party is reminding of the floods and the disaster in the Spanish province in October 2024, which resulted in more than 200 deaths.