A new distribution of political weights
Looking at the composition of the new European Parliament, things have and haven’t changed at the same time: The presence of more radical parties of both left and right, Eurosceptic and the anti-European, will change the atmosphere in the new European Parliament, with louder and more radical voices that will catch more attention in the media. 

The European People´s Party (EPP), even though substantially reduced, still represents the biggest group. The European socialists achieve 191 seats, a small increase. After the 2009 elections, the EPP represented 36% of the seats decreasing today to 29,43%, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) moved from 25% to some 25,4%, the Liberals (ALDE) lost substantially and went from 11,4% to just 8,9%. The Greens had no substantial change in their result. The right-wing Eurosceptic and anti-EU parties altogether stayed below 20% and formed less political groups than expected – a fact that greatly reduces their political role. The new distribution of political weights will however see chairpeople from Eurosceptic or anti-European parties at the head of some committees. Through these positions, they will be more visible and heard, so there will be more heterogeneous voices coming from the European Parliament. At the same time, these parties have not performed well enough to seriously get influence on European policy making: The EPP and the S&D still represent over 50% of the seats, thus effectively staying the two decisive groups for any essential decision-making. This strategic alliance, with the liberals as flank players, will decide the key political guidelines of the European Parliament in the coming five years, also in security and defence matters. The EPP, in the distribution of key positions, secured 8 Chair positions over 6 committees, 7 for the S&D and just 4 for the ALDE. More concretely however, the EPP group let go of the chairmanship of the security and defence subcommittee (SEDE) to leave it to Anna Fotyga from the ECR group (the one that is formed around the British Tories among others). It is highly likely that Michael Gahler from EPP will stay as EPP coordinator in the SEDE committee as will Ioan Pascu for the S&D group.

All in all, it is fair to say that the results of these elections suggest that the EU political system is undergoing significant changes whose full effects will be felt only some years from now. However, the Eurocrisis has not had such damaging effects on the results as previously feared.

Finding agreement between the European Parliament and the European Commission
The first test for the newly-elected Parliament has been the role that it played in the selection of the next Commission President. These elections were set to pass the first chapter of the new story linking the citizens’ vote – through the choice of a lead candidate by each political family - to the next Commission President. The main political groups in the European Parliament have decided to promote "lead candidates" (most use the German term, Spitzenkandidaten) for the presidency of the European Commission. The idea is that by voting for a member party of a particular group, voters can express their support for one of these candidates.
As newly elected President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker passed as a key message to the MEPs “to give up the nationalism because in Europe we win and we lose all together.” Jean-Claude Junker’s agenda will focus on ten policy areas: Jobs and Growth, Connected Digital Single Market, Climate Change Policy, Internal Market, Economic and Monetary Union, Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., Justice and Human Rights, New Policy on Migration, Democratic Change and Foreign Policy. Other policy areas will be more in the hands of the Member States, such as Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change as well as security and defence, however, in this latter area less and less can be achieved by Member States individually which has already led to a high and intense level of informal cooperation among Member States in this area. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that the cooperation will further increase over the coming years.

European Security and Defence Policy Issues from a European Parliament’s point of view
Even though formally, the competences of the EU level and in particular of the European Parliament in the areas of security and defence are limited, the Parliament has developed a substantial role in the last years. Its reports have regularly stirred public debates, thus influencing discussions among Member States at European level or adding legitimacy to their actions. In any case, it has vocally accompanied the Council’s policy-making in security and defence. More importantly, through its budgetary power, it has successfully directed money into areas that have a positive medium to long-term effect on European security and defence capabilities and policy-making. Depending somewhat on which parts of the budget are considered “relevant to security and defence” the European Union arguably spends several billion Euros per year directly on security and defence.
It becomes more and more accepted that the European Parliament has a legitimate voice in EU security and defence matters and has built up substantial competence with qualified personnel joining the Parliament. Also, the decisive political groups in favour of developing European security and defence policies (ranging from humanitarian and border management to external security and military matters) form a clear majority. On this basis, security and defence stakeholders should expect a European Parliament that will continue to foster developments towards more Europe in security and defence matters, through its reports and its budgetary power. There is no question that European security and defence policies will be further developed in this legislative period, there should however be serious questions about how European Institutions justify their activities in these areas and how they plan to bring them in line with European citizens’ demands beyond quoting Eurobarometer opinion polls.

Christoph Raab is Chairman of the European Security Round Table.
On the 17 and 18 November 2014, jointly with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Kangaroo Group and the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, the ESRT will hold a major Security and Defence Conference in Brussels: The European Security Forum.  This article has been published in: The European - Security and Defence Union; Volume 19, 2014, p. 18-19.