MEP Influence Index 2024: Top MEPs shaping EU institutional & constitutional affairs

This analysis measures the influence that Members of the European Parliament are exerting over EU legislation and documents that shape EU institutional & constitutional affairs. It is part of a series of reports that includes:

This research measures MEPs’ influence through a combination of criteria clustered in the following categories: formal and informal leadership positions, actual legislative work, political network, committee membership and voting behavior.

Disclaimer: this is an assessment based on our team's 15+ years of experience in interpreting relevant EU socio-political data. The aim of this research is not to provide an "absolute truth", but rather to provide an indicative overview. As in any such research, the weighing of the criteria may contain an intrinsic degree of subjectivity, which we aimed to reduce by consulting with a wide range of analysts and practitioners. To read the full methodology, click here.

Key findings:

The top 5 most influential MEPs on EU institutional & constitutional affairs policy have been: Salvatore De Meo (Chair of AFCO and prolific legislator across the board), Domènec Ruiz Devesa (S&D AFCO Coordinator and highly active legislator regarding the rules for EP elections), Sven Simon (EPP AFCO Coordinator and active legislator on the amendment of the Treaties), Sandro Gozi (Renew AFCO Coordinator active legislator on the composition of the European Parliament) and Gabriele Bischoff (Vice-Chair of AFCO and key legislator on rules of the European Parliament). See the full top 10 below.
MEPs from the S&D and Greens/EFA groups as well as German and Spanish tend to outperform their colleagues when discussing institutional matters. See the full stats below.

More details on the above findings can be found below.

Important: when tracking influence over EU policies, always bear in mind that while individual MEPs are the visible signatories of initiatives or amendments, they are not operating in an information vacuum. Rather, their views and actions are shaped by bigger political and societal forces / pressures that surround them and that they are networking with.

To understand the full picture, you need to look at the strength of these forces and the direction in which they are pushing and pulling. For example, the chart below shows the level of influence of all MEPs on EU institutional & constitutional affairs issues, but also the direction in which each of them is working to influence this policy area, e.g. whether they are supporters or opponents of EU political integration. Particular attention should be paid to the MEPs who are in the middle, i.e. which have both a fair level of influence and their views are moderate, because in the current (and future) fragmented political landscape, these MEPs (the swing voters) are the ones that make the difference, i.e. their votes are the ones that decide whether a key paragraph is approved or not.

Note: the positions of the MEPs in the chart below on the horizontal axis is based on an assessment of their voting behavior on a wide range of paragraphs and amendments on this particular sector.

Note: in the chart above, only the names of top MEPs are revealed. To uncover the full picture, contact us at [email protected].

The visual below shows our assessment of the most influential 10 MEPs in this sector (scroll to the right to see the full list).

This list is also available as a table format here.

NB: at least 4 of these top 10 MEPs are likely to come back after the elections. Would you like to know which ones? Contact us at [email protected] for more information on our EP2024 elections info-pack (which includes likely MEPs, Commissioners, policy impact, and much more).

In addition to the top 10 most influential MEPs, we have found it interesting to identify the MEPs from each group that has had the most "personalised" views (i.e. different from those of their political group), on either side of the debate. In other words, who is the most to the right and to the left of their political group on this chart. This is based on the analysis of their voting behavior on a wide range of relevant paragraphs and amendments impacting on this sector. These findings are represented below.

Trends by political group

Despite the strong EPP representation among the top influencers, S&D and the Greens tend to punch above their weight the most when it comes to institutional and constitutional affairs. When united, the centre-left camp was able to outweigh the EPP during this Parliamentary term.

Trends by country

Even though the top position belongs to an Italian, other delegations tend to be more influential proportionally to their size. The Luxembourish are proportionally the most influential, while among the largest countries, MEPs from Spain and Germany tend to be rather active on this topic. Notably, our top 10 features 3 Germans from 3 different political families.

If you are an institutional or socio-economic stakeholder and you are interested in a workshop about EU elections and/or the functioning of the EU institutions, contact us at [email protected].

Scroll back up to check our research in other sectors.

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