The Liberals, the last of the five parties in the EU Parliament to enter the June election with top candidates, announced their top candidates at their party congress in Brussels on Wednesday. The party is running under their common platform “Renew Europe Now” and a trio of candidates.
The trio includes German FDP defense expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who is joined by Renew parliamentary group leader Valérie Hayer and EDP Secretary General Sandro Gozi in the election campaign. Strack-Zimmermann, a member of the FDP Presidium and the FDP Federal Executive Board, has been a member of the German Bundestag since the federal election in 2017. She currently serves as the chairwoman of the Defense Committee. Hayer, a French MEP elected to the EU Parliament in 2019, was appointed as the new RENEW parliamentary group leader earlier this year. Gozi, an Italian lawyer who previously served as the Italian State Secretary for European Affairs from 2012 to 2018, ran on the French Renaissance list in the 2019 European elections.
The liberal Renew group, which is currently the third largest political force in the European Parliament, consists of three parties: ALDE (the Grand Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe), French Renaissance, and EDP (European Democratic Party). Austrian NEOS (NEOS – People’s Party), a member of ALDE, has Helmut Brandstätter as their top candidate. Brandstätter expressed his support for liberal candidates and discussed necessary reforms for improving EU policy.
