Manfred Weber
European policy is no longer a background variable. Migration, defence, energy, competitiveness, the rule of law, and the regulatory rulebook for AI and industry are all being decided in Brussels and Strasbourg, often on margins of a few votes. Boards and executive teams need to read where Europe is going, who is shaping it, and what that means for capital allocation across the next planning cycle.
Manfred Weber leads Europe’s largest political family and the largest group in the European Parliament, and brings senior leadership teams an inside reading of how EU policy, geopolitics, and political risk will shape their operating environment.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Manfred Weber
- He sits at the centre of the institution that writes European law. As Chair of the EPP Group since 2014 and President of the EPP since 2022, he has been part of every major legislative bargain in Brussels for over a decade.
- He explains EU politics the way an operator does, not the way a commentator does. He has negotiated directives, including the EU Returns Directive on migration, and can talk about how a file actually moves through the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission.
- He gives boards a realistic read on European political risk: migration, the centre-right and far-right relationship, transatlantic tensions, Ukraine, and the EU’s competitiveness agenda.
- He is rare on the speaking circuit. Few sitting heads of a major European political family take corporate engagements; access to that vantage point is the offer.
- He speaks fluent German and English and is comfortable with senior international audiences in either language.
Biography highlights
- President of the European People’s Party since 2022, re-elected for a second term in 2025.
- Chair of the EPP Group in the European Parliament since 2014, re-elected after the 2024 European elections for a fourth term.
- Member of the European Parliament for Bavaria since 2004, currently in his fifth parliamentary term.
- EPP Spitzenkandidat for President of the European Commission in 2019, nominated with 79 percent of the EPP congress vote.
- Vice-President of the CSU since 2015 and member of the CSU Party Presidency since 2009.
- Trained as a physical engineer at Munich University of Applied Sciences before entering politics, with prior experience running two companies.
Biography
The largest political family in Europe is the European People’s Party. Its group in the European Parliament holds more seats than any other, its national affiliates lead governments across the continent, and its members include the President of the European Commission. Manfred Weber leads both the party and the group, a combination of roles few politicians in Brussels have held simultaneously.
He has been Chair of the EPP Group in the Parliament since 2014, when he became the youngest group leader in the institution’s history. He was re-elected after the 2024 European elections for his fourth term. In 2022 he was elected President of the EPP, succeeding Donald Tusk, and was re-elected for a second term in 2025. That arc gives him a continuous view of the legislative engine of the EU across more than a decade of crises: the eurozone, migration in 2015 and again now, Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the energy shock, and the competitiveness debate.
Before Brussels he trained as a physical engineer at Munich University of Applied Sciences and ran two companies, then entered politics through the Junge Union and the CSU. He became the youngest member of the Bavarian State Parliament in 2002 at the age of 29, and was elected to the European Parliament two years later. He has represented Bavaria continuously since, sitting on the committees that shape constitutional affairs, civil liberties, and home affairs. He negotiated the EU Returns Directive, the first Home Affairs directive adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure.
For a corporate audience, the relevant point is not the biography but the vantage point. He is in the room when European policy is decided, and he can explain to a board, in plain terms, what is changing in Brussels, where the political centre is moving, and what that means for the rules companies will be operating under for the next five years.
Key speaking topics
- European political direction and the EU policy agenda
- EU competitiveness and the regulatory environment
- Migration policy and border security
- Transatlantic relations and the war in Ukraine
- The future of the EU after enlargement
- Centre-right politics in Europe and the rise of the far right
- Germany, the CSU, and Berlin’s role in the EU
Ideal for
- CEOs, boards, and government affairs leaders setting Europe strategy
- Strategy and policy leaders at financial institutions, energy, defence, and industrial firms with material EU exposure
- Senior leadership teams at multinationals navigating EU regulation on AI, competition, sustainability, and trade
- Conference programmes and closed-door briefings on European political risk
Audience outcomes
- A clearer read on where the EU is heading on competitiveness, migration, defence, and the green transition
- A sense of the political map across European capitals and how it constrains or enables the Commission’s agenda
- A realistic view of the centre-right and far-right dynamic and what it means for stability of EU policy
- An inside account of how legislation actually moves through Brussels, from someone who has done the deals
- Sharper questions to put to in-house government affairs and European strategy teams