Last week, voters in the 27 EU member states elected 720 lawmakers to the European Parliament for the next five years. Many of the members serving in the 2019-2024 European Parliament who have become the “familiar faces” in the Western Balkans retained their seats, while several did not get re-elected.
In addition to them, some MEPs chose to retire from the European Parliament or left it early to take national office. The final results are, also, still expected in several EU member states.
The most relevant offices for the Western Balkans – Rapporteurs and Delegation Chairs – will be elected later this year, based on the agreement of the political groups.
Re-elected for another five years
David McAllister (Germany) secured another term in the European Parliament. McAllister (CDU) has been a member of the EP since 2014. He is currently Vice President of the European People’s Party. McAllister was appointed Chair of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2017 and served as the EP Rapporteur for Serbia from 2014 to 2019.
Tonino Picula (Croatia) was also re-elected. Picula, a representative of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, has been an MEP since Croatia entered the EU in 2013. He was the Chair of the Working Group on the Western Balkans in the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Rapporteur for Montenegro, as well as Rapporteur for the IPA Funds and the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans.
Co-president of the ALDE party Ilhan Kyuchyuk (Bulgaria) also secured another term. Kyucyuk is a representative of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (Renew Europe group in the EP), which became the second-largest party in Bulgaria in the latest national and EP elections. He has been a member of the EP since 2014 and was the Rapporteur for North Macedonia in the previous parliament.
Andreas Schieder (Austria) was also re-elected, having led the list of the Social Democratic Party in Austria. Schieder has been a member of the EP since 2019 and chair of the EP Delegation to North Macedonia. He was a part of the EP observation mission for the Serbian election last year and claimed that the vote “was not fair”, for which he was attacked by the ruling party.
Thomas Waitz (Austria), Co-Chair of the Committee of the European Green Party, won another term. He was also active on issues related to the Western Balkans, including the environment, but also Serbia-Kosovo relations.
Another Austrian MEP who won re-election was Lukas Mandl, a member of the Austrian People’s Party (EPP group in the EP). He has been a member of the European Parliament since November 2017. Mandl has been one of the most vocal MEPs who supported Kosovo on many issues, including the visa liberalisation.
Alessandra Moretti (Italy) also kept her seat in the EP thanks to the preferential votes. Moretti (S&D group in the EP) has been serving as a member of the EP since 2019. She has been the Co-Chair of the EU-Serbia Stabilisation and Association Committee since 2022.
Matjaž Nemec (Slovenia) won the seat in the EP as the leading candidate of the Social Democrats in Slovenia. Nemec, who has been an MEP since Tanja Fajon left the Parliament to become Foreign Minister of Slovenia in 2022, was the Rapporteur for the abolition of the visas for the Serbs in Kosovo in 2024.
Željana Zovko (Croatia) was re-elected to the European Parliament on the list of the Croatian Democratic Union (EPP group in the EP). An MEP since 2016, Zovko was a member of the Working Groups for the Western Balkans and for external financial instruments, as well as a member of the Delegations for relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. In October 2021, she was appointed one of the vice presidents of the EPP Group.
Michael Gahler, a veteran Christian Democrat MEP (Germany), managed to retain his position in Brussels and Strasbourg. Gahler has been a member of the EP since 1999. He was the European Parliament’s Coordinator on Foreign Affairs and insisted on the reforms in the domain of rule of law in the Western Balkans.
Failed to win another term
Viola von Cramon (Germany) did not manage to keep her seat in the EP. Von Cramon was elected to the EP in 2019 as a member of the German Greens. She was the EP Rapporteur on Kosovo and Shadow Rapporteur for Serbia for the Greens/EFA group, at times strongly critical of the Serbian government. Von Cramon was placed 15th on the list of German Greens, which won 12 seats, losing 9 seats from 2019.
Klemen Grošelj (Slovenia), previously a member of the ruling Freedom Movement, stood in the elections for the EP as the top candidate of the non-parliamentary Greens of Slovenia. However, he was not re-elected since the Greens won only 1.6 % of the votes in Slovenia. Grošelj was a shadow rapporteur on Serbia and head of EP’s observation delegation in the election which took place in Serbia on 17 December 2023.
Franc Bogovič (Slovenia) also lost his seat in the EP. Bogovič was first elected to the EP in 2014 and again in 2019. He represented The Slovenian People’s Party – SLS (member of the EPP Group). SLS took 7.2% of the votes in Slovenia and will not be represented in the new EP. He was the Vice Chair of the EP Delegation to Serbia.
Angel Dzhambazki (Bulgaria), a member of the conservative ECR group, lost his seat in the EP. His biggest controversy involved giving what was perceived as a Nazi salute in the plenary session of the EP last year, during a debate on the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, for which he was fined.
Left the European Parliament
Vladimír Bilčík (Slovakia), who succeeded McAllister as the Rapporteur for Serbia in 2019, decided not to run for re-election. A member of EPP, Bilčík was also the Chair of the European Parliament Delegation for Montenegro. He was active in the 2019-2022 Inter-Party Dialogue on electoral conditions in Serbia as one of the mediators and was occasionally criticised by the opposition for, in their view, being too soft on the ruling parties.
Isabel Santos (Portugal), EP Rapporteur for Albania, did not seek reelection. Her Socialist Party of Portugal won the election with 8 seats. Her compatriot Paulo Rangel, EP Rapporteur for Bosnia and Herzegovina, left the parliament earlier this year to become Minister of State and Foreign Affairs of Portugal.
Reinhard Bütikofer (Germany), a foreign affairs spokesperson of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, who often commented on the developments in the Western Balkans, announced last year that he would not stand in the 2024 EP elections.
Final results from some countries pending
The coalition list of the Dutch Labour Party and the Green-Left, which won 8 seats in the Netherlands and finished in first place, contains two MEPs who were active in the Western Balkans – Tineke Strik and Thijs Reuten. Strik was the Greens-EFA spokesperson on Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Reuten led the European Parliament Observation Mission to the 2022 Serbian parliamentary election.
Strik and Reuten were the 5th and the 6th candidates on the coalition list, ensuring them good chances for re-election. The results of the preferential voting have not been published yet. On 12 June, Strik confirmed her re-election on X.
Andrey Kovachev, Spokesperson of the EPP Group for Enlargement and Southern Neighbourhood is also expected to be re-elected, given the fact that his party GERB has won both the European and the parliamentary elections in Bulgaria. Kovachev was the second candidate on the GERB list.