The five main candidates for the European Commission presidency are in Brussels for the latest in a series of debates ahead of the European Parliament elections on May 22-25.
At 21:00 CET on Thursday May 15, Martin Schulz (Socialists), Jean-Claude Juncker (European People’s Party), Guy Verhofstadt (Liberals), Ska Keller (Greens) and Alexis Tsipras (European Left) will face 90 minutes of questions from Monica Maggioni of Italian broadcaster RAI. The debate’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, are inviting members of the public to shape the debate by sending their questions via social media using the hashtag #TellEUROPE.
These are the first European elections to feature such debates between the candidates of the European Parliament’s main political groups. The first of these was hosted by Euronews in Maastricht on April 28 (see video below), while a second was held in Florence, Italy on May 9.