Accepted practice at present is that only heads of state can be invited by the president to speak to MEPs at the full session of Parliament in Strasbourg. But recently, MEPs have begun to bend their own unwritten rules and have allowed religious leaders and prime ministers such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to come and speak to MEPs. [...]
Tajani wants to encourage this trend and expand the group of people permitted to speak and debate with MEPs to include EU leaders such as Council President Donald Tusk or European Central Bank President Mario Draghi — in effect turning the Parliament into “the center of the debate” on the future of Europe, according to a document obtained by POLITICO. Crucially, he also wants MEPs to be able to quiz their guest speakers rather than just listening passively. [...]
According to other documents obtained by POLITICO, Tajani’s conservative European People’s Party and the Greens group proposed in a recent meeting of the Conference of Presidents (the Parliament’s decision-making body) to invite Jerry Brown, the governor of California, to speak and debate with MEPs. [...]
MEPs have come in for criticism for not turning up in sufficient numbers when the Parliament has had high-profile speakers. In July, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called the Parliament “ridiculous” because the hemicycle was close to empty during a speech by Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
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