There are 20 standing committees (and four sub-committees) in the EP, each covering a different policy area. They draw up reports for consideration in plenary – on both legislative and non-legislative matters – and seek to hold the executive to account. The seats on each committee, and their chairs, are normally distributed among the Parliament’s political groups in proportion to the number of seats they hold in the Parliament as a whole. The chart below lists the committees of the EP, ordered by the number of MEPs who sit on them. It also shows the chairs, elected by the members of each committee, together with their political group and nationality. The chairs formally meet together in the Conference of Committee Chairs, and have elected Bernd Lange, Chair of the International Trade (INTA) Committee, as their chair for the second half of the current parliamentary term.
The pie chart at the bottom shows the distribution of committee chairs between the political groups in April 2024, using the same colour code as before. In addition to its standing committees, the Parliament may also establish special committees and committees of inquiry. In the ninth term, a total of five special committees were established – on beating cancer, artificial intelligence, lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, and two successive committees on foreign interference and disinformation – plus two committees of inquiry – into the protection of animals in transit, and the use of Pegasus and other surveillance software.
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