The President of the European Commission is the head of the European Commission ― the executive branch of the European Union (EU) ― the most powerful officeholder in the EU. The President is responsible for allocating portfolios to members of the Commission and can reshuffle or dismiss them if needed. He determines the Commission's policy agenda and all the legislative proposals it produces (the Commission is the only body that can propose EU laws).
The Commission President also represents the EU abroad, although he does this alongside the President of the European Council and, at foreign minister's level, the High Representative (who sits in his Commission as Vice President). However the President, unlike a normal head of government, does not form foreign policy, command troops or raise taxes as these are largely outside the remit of the EU.
The post was established in 1958 and is elected by the European Parliament, on a proposal of the European Council for five-year terms. Once elected, he, along with his Commission, is responsible to Parliament which can censure him. The current President is José Manuel Barroso, who took office in October 2004. He is a member of the European People's Party (EPP) and is the former Prime Minister of Portugal. Barroso is the eleventh President and in 2009 was re-elected for a further five years. His vice president, as of 2010, is High Representative Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland.
Read more about President Of The European Commission: History, Appointment, Term of Office, Duties and Powers, Privileges of Office, List of Presidents
Famous quotes containing the words president of the, president of, president, european and/or commission:
““Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
The End”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one another are intricate and periodic; in fact, “galaxy” is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“I thought my razor was dull until I heard his speech and that reminds me of a story that’s so dirty I’m ashamed to think of it myself.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, as a newly-appointed college president commenting on the remarks of Huxley College’s outgoing president (1932)
“Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization; and for us European earth-dwellers, the adventure played out in the heart of the New World signifies in the first place that it was not our world and that we bear responsibility for the crime of its destruction.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)
“Yesterday the Electoral Commission decided not to go behind the papers filed with the Vice-President in the case of Florida.... I read the arguments in the Congressional Record and can’t see how lawyers can differ on the question. But the decision is by a strictly party vote—eight Republicans against seven Democrats! It shows the strength of party ties.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)