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.

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.

José Manuel Durão Barroso (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ mɐnuˈɛɫ duˈɾɐ̃w bɐˈʁozu]; born 23 March 1956) is the 11th and current President of the European Commission and a Portuguese politician. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004.

Durão Barroso (as he is known in Portugal) graduated in Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon and has an MSc in Economic and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva (Institut Européen de l'Université de Genève) in Switzerland. His academic career continued as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon. He did research for a PhD at Georgetown University and Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. but his CV does not list any doctoral degree (except honorary). He is a 1998 graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar. Back in Lisbon, Barroso became Director of the Department for International Relations at Lusíada University (Universidade Lusíada). He received honorary degrees from many Universities listed under honorary degrees.

Martin Schulz (born on 20 December 1955 in Hehlrath) is a German politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, since 2004 leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament (formerly called the Party of European Socialists group and since 2009 called the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats). Martin Schulz has a secondary level of education, he attended high school Heilig Geist Gymnasium in Würselen. He is the current President of the European Parliament.

After four years at primary school, from 1962 to 1966, Schulz attended the Heilig-Geist (Holy Spirit) grammar school in Broich (now Würselen), a district of the town of Broichweiden, for nine years, leaving without his Abitur (A-levels). From 1975 to 1976 he then trained to be a bookseller .

Over the next five years he worked for a number of publishing houses and bookshops, and in 1982 he opened his own bookshop in Würselen, which he ran until 1994.

Besides German, he speaks French and English and understands Dutch.