The President of the European Commission is the head of the European Commission ― the executive branch of the European Union (EU) ― the most powerful officeholder in the EU. The President is responsible for allocating portfolios to members of the Commission and can reshuffle or dismiss them if needed. He determines the Commission's policy agenda and all the legislative proposals it produces (the Commission is the only body that can propose EU laws).

The Commission President also represents the EU abroad, although he does this alongside the President of the European Council and, at foreign minister's level, the High Representative (who sits in his Commission as Vice President). However the President, unlike a normal head of government, does not form foreign policy, command troops or raise taxes as these are largely outside the remit of the EU.

The post was established in 1958 and is elected by the European Parliament, on a proposal of the European Council for five year terms. Once elected, he, along with his Commission, is responsible to Parliament which can censure him. The current President is José Manuel Barroso, who took office in October 2004. He is a member of the European People's Party (EPP) and is the former Prime Minister of Portugal. Barroso is the eleventh President and in 2009 was re-elected for a further five years. His vice president, as of 2010, is High Representative Baroness Catherine Ashton.

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.

The Commission operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "commissioners" ). There is one member per member state, though members are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. One of the 27 is the Commission President (currently José Manuel Durão Barroso) proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament. The Council then appoints the other 26 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and then the 27 members as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The first Barroso Commission took office in late 2004 and its successor, under the same President, took office in 2010.

The term "Commission" is used either in the narrow sense of the 27-member College of Commissioners (or College) or to also include the administrative body of about 23,000 European civil servants who are split into departments called Directorates-General and Services. The internal working languages of the Commission are English, French and German. The Members of the Commission and their "cabinets" (immediate teams) are based in the Berlaymont building of Brussels.

Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh; born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.

Herman Achille Van Rompuy (pronounced [ˈɦɛɾmɑn vɑn ˈɾɔmpœy] ( listen); born 31 October 1947) is the first long-term and full-time President of the European Council (until the Treaty of Lisbon, the position had rotated among the prime ministers of the member states for six months each, since then they choose a President of their meetings for a 2½ year period, renewable once). This is an unelected position. A Belgian politician of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party, Van Rompuy served as the 49th prime minister of Belgium from 30 December 2008 until his predecessor (Yves Leterme) succeeded him on 25 November 2009. He has the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold.

On 19 November 2009 Van Rompuy was elected by the members of the European Council as the first full time President of the European Council under the Treaty of Lisbon. He was appointed to chair the institution for the period starting from 1 December 2009 until 31 May 2012, though he only took up his position officially on 1 January 2010. On 1 March 2012 Herman Van Rompuy was re-elected by the heads of state or government of the 27 EU member states. His second term will last two and a half years, from 1 June 2012 to 30 November 2014.

Sir Graham Robert Watson (born 23 March 1956) is a European politician from the United Kingdom. He has served as a Member of the European Parliament for South West England since 1994 and was the leader of the Group of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party 2002–2004 and the first leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe 2004–2009. Since 2011, he is the President of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party.

Graham Watson was born in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute (Scotland, United Kingdom). His father was an officer in the Royal Navy and his mother a teacher. Watson was educated at the City of Bath Boys' School, where he played violin in the school orchestra. He later returned to Scotland to attend Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh where he graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in modern languages. This allowed him to work as an interpreter between 1979 and 1980, he now speaks four European languages. After 1980 he worked as an administrator at Paisley College until 1983.