President of the European Commission in the context of "Right of initiative (legislative)"

A European commissioner is a member of the 27-member European Commission. Each member within the Commission holds a specific portfolio. The commission is led by the president of the European Commission. In simple terms they are the equivalent of government ministers.

The European Council (informally EUCO) is a collegiate body (directorial system) and a symbolic collective head of state, that defines the overall political direction and general priorities of the European Union (EU). It is composed of the heads of state or of government of the EU member states, the president of the European Council, and the president of the European Commission. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also takes part in its meetings.

Established as an informal summit in 1975, the European Council was formalised as an institution in 2009 upon the commencement of the Treaty of Lisbon. Its current president is António Costa, former prime minister of Portugal.

The 2019 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 23 and 26 May 2019. It was the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were elected to represent more than 512 million people from 28 member states. In February 2018, the European Parliament had voted to decrease the number of MEPs from 751 to 705 if the United Kingdom were to withdraw from the European Union on 29 March 2019. However, the United Kingdom participated alongside other EU member states after an extension of Article 50 to 31 October 2019; therefore, the allocation of seats between the member states and the total number of seats remained as it had been in 2014.

On 26 May 2019, the centre-left and centre-right parties suffered significant losses, while pro-EU centrist, liberal and environmentalist parties and anti-EU right-wing populist parties made substantial gains. The European People's Party led by Manfred Weber won the most seats in the European Parliament, making Weber the leading candidate to become the next President of the European Commission. Despite this, the European Council decided after the election to nominate Ursula von der Leyen as new Commission President.

The president of the European Council is the person presiding over and driving forward the work of the European Council on the world stage. This institution comprises the college of heads of state or government of European Union (EU) member states as well as the president of the European Commission, and provides political direction to the EU.

From 1975 to 2009, the chair of the European Council was an unofficial position (often referred to as the president-in-office) held by the head of state or government of the member state holding the semiannually rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union at any given time. However, since the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon, article 15 of Treaty on European Union states that the European Council appoints a full-time president for a two-and-a-half-year term, with the possibility of renewal once. Appointments, as well as the removal of incumbents, require a double majority support in the European Council.

The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political and economic forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is organized around shared values of pluralism, liberal democracy, and representative government. G7 members are major IMF advanced economies.

Originating from an ad hoc gathering of finance ministers in 1973, the G7 has since become a formal, high-profile venue for discussing and coordinating solutions to major global issues, especially in the areas of trade, security, economics, and climate change. Each member's head of government or state, along with the EU's Commission president and European Council president, meet annually at the G7 Summit; other high-ranking officials of the G7 and the EU meet throughout the year. Representatives of other states and international organizations are often invited as guests, with Russia having been a formal member (as part of the G8) from 1997 until its expulsion in 2014.

The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian democratic, liberal-conservative, and conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties. Founded by primarily Christian-democratic parties in 1976, it has since broadened its membership to include liberal-conservative parties and parties with other centre-right political perspectives. On 31 May 2022, the party elected as its President Manfred Weber, who was also EPP's Spitzenkandidat in 2019.

The EPP has been the largest party in the European Parliament since 1999 and in the European Council since 2002. It is also the largest party in the current European Commission. The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola are from the EPP. Many of the founding fathers of the European Union were also from parties that later formed the EPP.

The Spitzenkandidat process (German: [ˈʃpɪt͡sn̩kandiˌdaːt] , German for 'lead candidate') is the method of linking the choice of President of the Commission to the outcome of the European Parliament elections, with each major European political party (not to be confused with the political groups of the European Parliament) nominating their candidate for Commission President prior to the Parliamentary elections. The Spitzenkandidat of the largest party (or the one able to secure the support of a majority coalition) would then be proposed by the European Council to the European Parliament for election to the Commission Presidency.

This process was first followed in 2014, though its legitimacy was contested by some of the members of the European Council (with the UK and Hungarian Prime Ministers voting against the nomination of the EPP's Spitzenkandidat Jean-Claude Juncker).