The 736-member European Parliament elected in June 2009 will hold its first sitting on July 14, with the agenda including electing a new President of the assembly, and a briefing on July 15 by Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on his country’s plans for its EU presidency.
 
Reinfeldt’s office said that the emphasis in his speech would be on the two greatest challenges the Swedish Presidency will have to face during its six months in charge – climate change and the economic crisis. 
 
"Close and constructive co-operation between the Swedish Presidency and the European Parliament is essential in order to be able to meet the autumn’s challenges," Reinfeldt has said.
 
His office said that Reinfeldt would speak about other issues also of interest this autumn, issues such as co-operation in the area of justice, the transition to a new Treaty and the Baltic Sea Strategy, which is to give us a safer and cleaner sea.
 
"I will talk about Sweden’s role in Europe, the importance of European leadership on the climate issue and that working together makes us stronger," Reinfeldt said.
 
The assembly was expected to elect Poland’s former prime minister Jerzy Buzek as its President.
 
The European Parliament, beginning its five-year term, is made up half of MEPs who were re-elected and half of newcomers.
 
The largest single bloc in the EP is that of the European People’s Party (EPP) with 264 MEPs, followed by the centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in Europe (PASDE, formerly the Party of European Socialists) with 183 MEPs, and then the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) with 84 MEPs.
 
Euronews said that those who oppose European federalism – or even the existence of the European Parliament itself – had been forming alliances.
 
The European Conservatives and Reformists – including Britain’s tories and the Polish Law and Justice Party – aim to fight further EU integration.
 
The even stronger eursceptics of the UK Independence Party have joined the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group – a block of 30 MEPs from eight countries, which some commentators feel are more to the right than the old group they replace. And although UKIP are the only party in the group calling for withdrawal from the EU, they claim their partners are all sympathetic to their position.
 
Among the far-right groups who made gains in the European elections are the British National Party. Their two MEPs join 26 others who are not attached to any of the main political groups, among them the extreme right-wing French National Front, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and the Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, Euronews said.
 
MEPs will postpone for at least two months a vote on reappointing European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
 
The EPP does not have a majority sufficiently large to push through the re-election of Barroso, even though he has the formal backing of the heads of state and government of all 27 EU member states.
 
The BBC quoted the Greens bloc as saying in a July 13 statement that it did "not trust (Barroso) to wholeheartedly implement the policies that Europe urgently needs" as a result of his handling of the economic crisis in recent months.
 
PASDE chairperson Martin Schulz said: "They wanted to rush this through, and we have prevented that. We will see and hear in September what Mr Barroso has to say and discuss with him," he said. "What I have seen over the past weeks does not make me hopeful."