Based on over 7,000 meeting declarations encompassing more than 21,000 stakeholder interactions with socio-economic stakeholders over 16 months (Nov 2024 – Feb 2026), this report ranks 26 Commissioners by an Integrated Outreach Score that combines their personal meetings with the independent outreach conducted by their cabinets. The High Representative for Foreign Affairs is excluded due to the diplomatic nature of the portfolio.

Stakeholder outreach at the Commission level reflects how policy portfolios are managed in practice. Commissioners with broad regulatory mandates — spanning industrial strategy, trade, environment, or digital policy — naturally attract more engagement from interest representatives seeking to ensure that regulation reflects the operational realities of the sectors it governs. This dialogue is a healthy part of the democratic process, allowing policy-makers to ground their decisions in real-world expertise rather than developing regulation in isolation.

Key findings:

• Stéphane Séjourné (Industrial Strategy) leads the index by a clear margin, reflecting the breadth of stakeholder interest in his portfolio.
• Jessika Roswall (Environment) and Henna Virkkunen (Digital / Tech Sovereignty) form a competitive second tier, each heading portfolios that attract sustained interest-representation activity.
• The share of outreach conducted personally by the Commissioner vs. delegating to cabinet members varies widely, from 34% (Ursula von der Leyen) to 85% (Michael McGrath).
• The top 5 individual cabinet members are Luis Planas Herrera (Roswall), Nicolò Brignoli (Dombrovskis), Arthur Corbin (Séjourné), Werner Stengg (Virkkunen), Elena Arveras (Albuquerque).

Stéphane Séjourné leads the index, with an integrated score of over 3,500. His Industrial Strategy portfolio spans multiple policy sectors that attract heavy interest-representation activity. Stéphane Séjourné’s Commissioner Personal score accounts for 61% of his total, with the remaining 39% coming from his cabinet’s independent outreach. He engaged with 940 unique stakeholders — the broadest reach of any Commissioner.

Jessika Roswall and Henna Virkkunen are in a virtual tie for second and third place, separated by fewer than 20 points. Jessika Roswall holds the Environment portfolio, while Henna Virkkunen covers Digital / Tech Sovereignty. Henna Virkkunen conducted more meetings personally (304 vs 212) and her cabinet held more independent meetings (433 vs 366). Jessika Roswall’s slightly higher integrated score reflects the fact that her cabinet’s independent meetings engaged a higher proportion of mid-to-large stakeholders (10–50 FTE), which add up more points. Strictly by meeting count, Henna Virkkunen would rank second. The ordering between these two is ultimately a methodological choice: scoring that weights stakeholder size favours Jessika Roswall; a pure meeting-count index would favour Henna Virkkunen.

Valdis Dombrovskis (Economy & Simplification) and Maria Luís Albuquerque (Financial Services) round out the top 5. Among the top 10, Valdis Dombrovskis has the lowest Commissioner % in the top 10 at 38% (only von der Leyen, at 34%, delegates more — but her role as President makes direct comparison difficult). The majority of his integrated score comes from independent cabinet activity.

Michael McGrath has the highest Commissioner % at 85%, indicating that the vast majority of his office’s outreach score comes from his personal meetings. His cabinet operated independently in only 47 meetings. At the other end, Valdis Dombrovskis (38%) shows one of the most cabinet-driven models.

Ursula von der Leyen declared 52 personal meetings and 122 independent cabinet meetings with socio-economic stakeholders. As President, much of her engagement is with heads of state and international counterparts — not captured by this index.

Kaja Kallas (High Representative for Foreign Affairs) is not included in this index. Her declared meetings are predominantly with foreign policy think tanks, human rights organisations, and peace bodies, with limited industry engagement.

Luis Planas Herrera (Roswall cabinet) leads the individual index with the second broadest individual stakeholder reach (234 unique stakeholders). 141 of his 198 meetings were conducted independently.

Nicolò Brignoli (Dombrovskis) follows with 189 meetings across 176 unique stakeholders, of which 156 were conducted independently. Arthur Corbin (Séjourné cabinet) had the most meetings of any cabinet member (247) and the broadest stakeholder base of any cabinet member (340 unique stakeholders).

Michael Hager (Head of Cabinet for Dombrovskis) conducted 93 of his 106 meetings (88%) independently — making him the most autonomous cabinet-level interlocutor.

Vita Juknė (Roswall) and Jan Ceyssens (Roswall) engage with the largest stakeholders on average (FTE 8.73 and 8.47 respectively).

Dragos Tudorache (Séjourné cabinet) is a former MEP and Romania's former Digital Minister, and was co-rapporteur of the EU's AI Act. His 134 unique stakeholders — spanning tech companies, digital rights organisations, and AI research bodies — make him one of the most connected cabinet members in the digital policy space.

Scope note: The activity of the staff in the Directorates-General (DGs) is covered by a separate index, whose update will be published soon.

Data source. The analysis is based on meeting declarations published by the European Commission under its transparency framework. Each declared meeting between a Commissioner or cabinet member and one or more interest representatives is split into individual policy-maker–stakeholder pairs. The analysis covers the period Nov 2024 – Feb 2026.

Integrated scoring approach. Each Commissioner’s Integrated Outreach Score is composed of two elements:

• Commissioner Personal Outreach Score — meetings where the Commissioner is personally present. The Commissioner’s score is calculated using the base formula divided only by the number of other Commissioners present in the same meeting.
• Cabinet Independent Outreach Score — meetings conducted by cabinet members without the Commissioner present, weighted at 80% of the base score.

Multi-stakeholder meeting normalisation. When a Commissioner or cabinet member meets multiple stakeholder organisations in a single meeting, each interaction’s score is divided by the square root of the number of stakeholders present. This ensures that large roundtables (e.g., an industry dialogue with 44 organisations) are weighted proportionally — more than a single bilateral meeting, but not 44 times more. Without this normalisation, Commissioners whose portfolios naturally involve multi-party dialogues (such as industrial strategy or trade) would receive disproportionately higher scores.

Base score formula. The base score for each policy-maker–stakeholder interaction is: 1 + 9 × ln(1 + min(FTE, 50)) / ln(51), yielding a range of 1.0 (single-person stakeholder) to 10.0 (stakeholder with 50+ FTE). The logarithmic scaling ensures that stakeholder size matters but with diminishing returns.

Meeting counts. Commissioner Meetings counts distinct meetings where the Commissioner was personally present. Cabinet Ind. Meetings counts distinct meetings where cabinet members operated without their Commissioner. Unique Stakeholders counts the distinct organisations met across both Commissioner and cabinet meetings.

Limitations. This index measures engagement with socio-economic stakeholders only. Meetings with political leaders, heads of state, and diplomatic counterparts are not included. The FTE figures from the Transparency Register are self-declared. The analysis captures only meetings declared under the Commission’s transparency framework.