IMCO Committee to hold hearing for new Croatian Commissioner today

A new Member State, a new Commissioner. With the EU expanding to 28 Member States on 1st July, the Commission will also be adding a new member to its College. This is in line with the compromise struck with Ireland over the Lisbon Treaty, ensuring that each Member State will have one Commissioner.

The nominated Commissioner for Croatia is Neven Mimica, a member of the ruling Social Democrat Party in Zagreb and former minister for European Integration. Barroso plans to allocate the Consumer Protection portfolio to Mimica, so his European Parliamentary hearing will be before the Internal Market and Consumer Protection committee ("IMCO").

The hearing will take place in 1 hour (9:30-12:30 CET) and can be live streamed on the Parliament's website.

The European Parliament has put together a nice flowchart showing how Commissioners are appointed (outside of when the Commission as a whole is elected) here.

European Elections in Croatia

Today Croatia goes to the polls to elect its 12 MEPs - the country will formally join the EU on 1st July this year. Those elected won't have too long to establish themselves with elections for the whole Parliament in 2014, and, on top of that, the number of Croatia's parliamentary seats will reduce by one due to the Lisbon Treaty limitation of the EP to 751 seats.

Though there are 336 candidates on 28 lists (the election is on the open list system), the campaign has been short and lacklustre, with the ruling S&D Group-aligned party predicted to win the poll on a 60% turnout.

If these predictions are borne out, it will provide a small boost to the centre-left S&D Group in the European Parliament, which is the second biggest group in the Parliament, but the centre-right EPP will comfortably remain the biggest party.

Best of luck to Croatia & vote if you can!