Not all MEPs are equal.

If you want to know how the European Parliament intends to shape major policy battles on deregulation, climate, tech and the EU budget, as well as prepare for the midterm top-jobs reshuffle and an election year that threatens to reshape the bloc, certain voices are more important than others.

Of the Parliament’s 720 members, only a handful will truly influence what comes next — from heavyweights steering landmark legislation to dynamic duos working hard behind closed doors.

They’ll be doing that work against a backdrop of two years of growing mistrust between Europe’s biggest mainstream political families (the European People’s Party and the Socialists and Democrats), an increasingly powerful far right, a sweeping simplification and competitiveness drive, and a heated migration debate.

Here are the 17 MEPs to watch and the political battles that will define the months ahead.

Power brokers

The Parliament president will sit at the center of the EPP-S&D rift during the midterm top-jobs reshuffle. The EPP is determined that Metsola should remain in her job, but the S&D insists it’s their turn to have someone in the top seat. How that battle turns out will be a key test of whether Europe’s centrist alliance can continue working together after two years of infighting or descend into a nasty standoff. If it’s the latter, Metsola could try to seek a third term as president with support from the broad network of MEPs she has cultivated over the past five years, including on the right and far right of the hemicycle.

If Marine Le Pen becomes French president next year, Bellamy could be the man that EPP chief Manfred Weber gets to conduct damage control in the Parliament. The architect of the EU’s tough new returns regulation, who voted with the far-right Patriots group, Bellamy is a trusted Weber lieutenant, serving as EPP treasurer and group vice chair. Just as the EPP sought to bring Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy into the EU fold, it may try to do the same with Le Pen’s National Rally — and Bellamy, whose Republicans party has moved closer to the National Rally back in France, could be the one calling them.

Italy has the S&D’s second-largest national delegation, behind Spain, and S&D vice chair Camilla Laureti is tasked with making that weight count. Her portfolio puts her inside Parliament’s engine room — covering plenary session preparation, the Conference of Presidents (meetings of top MEPs), and group strategy — making her key to ensuring the Socialists deliver on any deal to rebuild the center and pull the EPP away from far-right majorities. Laureti is also Italian Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein’s eyes and ears in Brussels, an important role ahead of Italy’s 2027 national election. Laureti’s delicate task is to keep potential tensions between the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement in the Parliament from spilling into Rome and exposing cracks in the country’s anti-Meloni opposition.

Hayer chairs the Renew Europe group at a moment when liberals are losing ground across the bloc. She is trying to recruit outcast MEPs and lift Renew from being the fifth-largest group in the parliament. She is also positioning Renew as the bridge between EPP leader Manfred Weber and S&D leader Iratxe García, pushing for steadier cooperation between the traditional centrist allies (and Renew needs stability, as roughly half of its MEPs vote with the right-wing bloc when the EPP joins forces with the far right). Hayer’s position as group leader is secure ahead of the midterms: There is little appetite for change and no clear challenger. But Emmanuel Macron’s eventual departure will cost her a key ally, while she will need to deal with infighting among France’s many liberal factions.

If Manfred Weber starts sounding like he’s on the campaign trail in Spain, Dolors Montserrat will be one reason why. The seasoned lawmaker leads Madrid’s center-right delegation in the European Parliament as the People’s Party gears up for a national election due by August 2027, which it is likely to win. Ahead of that vote, Spanish MEPs will start using Parliament to push debates and votes designed to score points back home. Weber has incentives to listen: Defeating Pedro Sánchez would topple one of Europe’s last major Socialist governments and deal a heavy blow to the S&D. As EPP secretary-general, Montserrat also coordinates the EPP’s member parties, and she is in line for a ministerial job if Partido Popular wins the election.

Behind-the-scenes movers

Cavazzini has placed herself at the heart of some of the EU’s biggest policy fights, including as the Greens’ top lawmaker on the International Trade Committee, where she pushed for stronger safeguards in the EU-U.S. trade deal. She also chairs the Internal Market Committee, where she is steering debates on Big Tech and digital markets, with key files on consumer protection and product standards to be presented by the European Commission in the coming months. Cavazzini has also landed the coveted job of leading negotiations on the Industrial Accelerator Act, the EU’s growth and competitiveness package. She will steer discussions on its politically sensitive provisions on Chinese investment in Europe.

A first-term independent MEP who quit a small Spanish anti-establishment party after its leader faced allegations of illegal campaign financing, Solier joined the European Conservatives and Reformists group and, despite not having a powerful national delegation behind him, landed roles dealing with a string of major tech files. He is Parliament’s lead negotiator on the Cloud and AI Development Act, a flagship of Europe’s tech-sovereignty push amid worsening transatlantic tensions, and leads the ECR’s position on the Cybersecurity Act.

Everyone wants a piece of this 29-year-old German — or at least a cameo in his TikToks. One of Parliament’s youngest MEPs, the influencer-turned-politician made a name for himself through social-media savvy and late-night raves in the hallways. Despite leading a tiny party born over beers with university friends, Sieper was recruited by Renew in February and brought onto its leadership group to help shape communications strategy. Now he is organizing an influencer summit and cultivating allies across party lines by founding a football team. As the midterms loom, talk in the hallways is that he could try to leverage his popularity to snatch one of the precious jobs in Parliament.

This term, Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee has already received more requests to waive MEPs’ immunity than during the entire previous mandate, including cases linked to corruption allegations and the Huawei and Qatargate influence scandals. That’s led to accusations of backroom deals between political groups to shield colleagues from prosecution. Senior lawmakers reject those claims, instead blaming poor-quality legal cases and flawed investigations. Now MEPs want to rewrite the rules on immunity. Leading the overhaul is committee chair Kyuchyuk, himself subject to a controversial immunity waiver request from the EU public prosecutor in Bulgaria that he was shielded from.

In mid-September 2026, Bielan was appointed president of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, and, as leader of Poland’s Law and Justice delegation in the Parliament, maintains a direct line to party leader Jarosław Kaczyński. While ties between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Trump administration have cooled, Bielan has emerged as a key bridge to Washington, and the ECR is the Republican Party’s official sister party in Europe. Bielan led ECR missions to meet senior U.S. officials and politicians, maintaining the strong bond between the U.S. and Poland.

The treasurer of the EPP group, Salini landed the role of lead negotiator on one of the Parliament’s most contentious files (and a top EPP priority): rolling back the de facto phase-out of a ban on the combustion engine. His job was initially to try to win over skeptical Social Democrats and liberals, but it’s become a struggle to unite his own group. Salini has to rally the EPP around a common position on emissions targets and alternative fuels, and in doing so he will need to decide whether to seek a centrist compromise or a deal with the far right.

Dynamic duos

Viktor Orbán’s former political director Balázs Orbán (no relation) arrives in Parliament at the end of September, taking a seat from a colleague who returned to Hungary’s national parliament, giving the Patriots another seasoned political operator. The Hungarians are widely seen as experts at navigating the Parliament and bending its machinery to their advantage. Orbán will work alongside another powerful Hungarian Patriots MEP, Kinga Gál, ahead of the midterm reshuffle, as the group pushes the EPP to tear down the firewall and let it compete for top jobs.

Alongside him is Ehlers, the Patriots’ chief whip, who is tasked with finding common group positions and preparing plenary business. A former Parliament staffer with years of experience, she is also leading the Patriots’ push in the Constitutional Affairs Committee to rewrite Parliament’s rules, which the group argues are being weaponized to keep it on the sidelines.

These are two of Iratxe García’s most important lieutenants. They are also two of her biggest headaches. Negrescu is a seasoned strategist, with nearly a decade as an MEP and a stint as Romania’s Europe minister on his CV. He now leads an obscure working group tasked with shaping Parliament’s future, with reform proposals due by December. His trickier role is managing tensions between the S&D and Romania’s Social Democrats (PSD): Negrescu has tried to keep the PSD on a pro-EU course even as it flirts with the far-right at home, making him Brussels Socialists’ first port of call if that rapprochement deepens.

Schaldemose knows Parliament’s machinery inside out after 20 years as an MEP. Since 2024, she has served as a vice-president, overseeing the institution’s digital transformation and adaptation to AI, after previously leading negotiations on the Digital Services Act. She also leads the Danish Social Democrats, which are increasingly at odds with García’s Spanish delegation after Denmark joined in with the attacks on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez over the Ceuta crisis. With Sánchez under electoral pressure and Nordic Social Democrats potentially gaining governing clout in Sweden and Finland, the Danes’ weight within the S&D could grow.

Herbst and Repasi — the European Parliament leaders of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democrats and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil’s center-left Social Democrats, respectively — are a key backchannel to the EPP-S&D coalition in the Parliament. The two MEPs are seeking to ease rising mistrust by pushing for a German-style grand coalition (or a Brussels-style package deal) with binding commitments and trade-offs to strengthen the alliance during the midterms, and therefore cut the far-right out of policymaking in Brussels.