It’s not exactly a loving moment in politics right now.
Europe is bracing for a transatlantic divorce and debating a cordon sanitaire that bans some categories of political marriage.
Still, in Brussels, love is in the air in the halls of power. Voters sent influential lovebirds to the European Parliament in the election last June, showing that couples that run together, stay together. Political promotions to the European Commission mean longtime partnerships will need to navigate the complicated dynamics that come with growing influence and higher scrutiny. And lobbyists are whispering sweet nothings into the ears of journalists and politicians.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, POLITICO is highlighting eight Brussels power couples. Each couple was asked a standard set of questions about how they met, to what extent they work together, and how they manage conflicts of interest, should they arise.
On a scale of one to five, they were each assigned a power rating, as well as a “raised-eyebrow” factor for controversy or risk of conflict of interest.
A little bit country, a little bit rock n’ roll
Christophe Hansen and Analia Glogowski
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Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen is married to Analia Glogowski, a staffer in Parliament President Roberta Metsola’s cabinet.
They met thanks to the Strasbourg plenary, through mutual friends at the Mosquito, a now-defunct watering hole popular with students on Place St. Etienne. Hansen would go on to later become a MEP representing his native Luxembourg, serving from 2018 until 2024. Glogowski put in more than a decade as a committee staffer before joining Metsola’s team in 2022.
While having an ear to the ground in the Parliament is an advantage for any commissioner, Hansen said through a spokesperson that they “try to keep our work out of the way during the limited time together.”
He added: “Our work streams are completely decoupled.” It’s not totally clear how much that was the case when he was an MEP: Hansen was a European People’s Party member of the International Trade Committee while Glogowski was an EPP staffer for the panel.
The couple, who have two kids, are deeply guarded when it comes to family life. But Glogowski has been an influencer in her own right, contributing Brussels tip sheets to Lonely Planet and posting restaurant reviews and band interviews at The Brusselsprouts blog. You might catch her and Hansen out on a date, but they blend in well. The now-European commissioner was photographed wearing camouflage shorts and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt at a recent edition of the Rock Werchter festival.
Mr. and Mr. Left
Robert Biedroń and Krzysztof Śmiszek
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Biedroń and Śmiszek’s relationship, and its lack of legal legitimacy, is core to their political brand.
Now both MEPs from Poland’s New Left Party, Śmiszek recalls first seeing a photo 23 years ago of Biedroń, the founder of an LGBTI advocacy group in hyper-Catholic Poland. “I said, ‘My God, this handsome guy is doing great stuff, so I need to meet him.’”
They’ve been together ever since, both politically and personally.
“We bring work home,” Biedroń said, citing disputes ranging from legislative questions to which type of rainbow swag to distribute at events.
This is Biedroń’s second term in the European Parliament, while Śmiszek won a seat for the first time last year. (Biedroń, the co-chair of their party, faced accusations that he intervened to assure Śmiszek a spot on the list. The couple notes that Śmiszek is a longtime activist who has his own voter base, serving in the Polish legislature and as deputy justice minister.)
Same-sex civil unions are not recognized in Poland, much less marriage. The New Left is part of the coalition supporting Prime Minister Donald Tusk, even though he has not fulfilled his campaign promise to legalize civil unions.
As mayor of Słupsk, Biedroń discovered something of a hidden talent: officiating weddings. It became trendy for straight couples from around the country to seek out his services, and it turned out to be a bittersweet highlight of the job.
“It was both a pleasure and a torture to me, to be honest,” said Biedroń of the privilege unavailable to him and Śmiszek.
LISTEN to the joint interview with Biedroń and Śmiszek on this week’s edition of the EU Confidential podcast.
On Cloud Nine
Georgia Brooks and Johan Ysewyn
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If they made a rom-com about consultants, it would start like this one.
“It was dislike at first email,” said Georgia Brooks. At the time, she was the editor of Chambers Europe, which ranks lawyers. Johan Ysewyn, a Belgian competition lawyer, took umbrage with his ranking and wrote to complain in September 2012. Eventually, he got the girl. Their first date was in late 2014, with Brooks subsequently moving from London to Brussels. “Sadly, his ranking didn’t really improve,” Brooks said.
The couple went on to co-found The Nine, Brooks’ vision of a private members’ club for women. Since opening in 2021, the house on Rue Archimède in the European Quarter has become a hotspot for networking regardless of gender, and the launchpad for initiatives to improve women’s representation in the Brussels bubble. That same year, Ysewyn became managing partner at the Brussels office of Covington, the global litigation and lobbying behemoth.
Brooks, who serves as the club’s CEO, said the philosophy behind The Nine jibes with Covington’s values and minimizes potential conflicts of interest. “However,” she added, “there can be moments of conflict, typically about who is in control of the karaoke mic.”
Emperor and empress
Stanley Pignal and Elvira Eilert Pignal
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Stanley Pignal has been writing the weekly Charlemagne column about European politics for the Economist since 2022 from his office on Brussels’ Boulevard Charlemagne. His recent columns include a cheeky proposal for Canada to join the EU and a look at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s “new doctrine” for dealing with the far right.
His wife Elvira is high up at Teneo Europe, the consultancy, where she is the chief strategy officer and senior managing director. The French-Swedish couple say they go to elaborate lengths to avoid conflicts of interest, and Stanley avoids writing about Elvira’s corporate clients.
“The most effective Chinese wall in a couple is to have more interesting stuff than work to talk about at home,” Stanley said.
This is their second stint in Brussels. From 2009 to 2012 Elvira worked for Brunswick and Stanley for the Financial Times.
Ex marks the spot
Hadja Lahbib and Olivier Lemaire
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Belgium’s European Commissioner Hadja Lahbib was, until relatively recently, a journalist.
Her move to become Belgium’s foreign minister in 2022 after a career as a roving reporter for Belgian national broadcaster RTBF surprised many. The now-commissioner for crisis management has another remarkable political connection, which proves how small her country really is.
Through her husband Olivier Lemaire, who runs a Brussels-based consultancy called Olé, which is part of Impact, Public Sector Advisors, Lahbib is indirectly linked to a political scandal that shocked Belgian and European politics.
Lemaire was previously married to Marie Arena, the former MEP who is now charged amid a European Parliament corruption scandal dubbed Qatargate. Arena and Lemaire’s son Ugo Lemaire was recently arrested and charged with being part of a vast drug smuggling operation, though that is said not to be linked to Qatargate.
Lahbib declined to comment.
EPP power brokers
Ouarda Bensouag and Michael Alexander Speiser
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This is a bread-and-butter, Franco-German EPP power couple in the European Parliament.
Ouarda has had a blistering rise through the ranks of the center-right grouping, recently becoming its secretary general. She is right in the inner circle of Bavarian power broker Manfred Weber, the leading EPP lawmaker.
Her partner, Speiser, recently became a director general of one of the institution’s administrative silos, a coveted and influential role overseeing the legislative work of committees working on economic policy, industrial policy and the single market.
North-South Alliance
Roberta and Ukko Metsola
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In 2009, Roberta and Ukko Metsola became the first married couple to run for seats in the European Parliament: she in Malta, he in Finland.
That year, they both lost. But they made a promise to each other: The first to score a spot in the hemicycle would take it, and the other would drop their electoral ambitions. Their parallel candidacies “introduced a certain humor and good-natured rivalry,” Roberta told the Times of Malta.
Both EPP wunderkinds, the couple met when he showed up at a 1999 meeting of the Studenti Demokristjani Maltin, a Maltese Christian-democrat student group. An early date was a protest in Helsinki against Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, Malta Today reported, and they married in 2005.
It wasn’t until 2013 that the “right Metsola was eventually elected,” Ukko said. His wife would go on to become the president of the European Parliament and one of the most popular European politicians ever, both at home and in Brussels. They have four children.
Ukko didn’t exit the political scene. He has developed a reputation as a savvy lobbyist for Royal Caribbean Cruises, a pillar of a pollution-heavy industry. The couple have a “Chinese wall” regarding each other’s work, and have broken no rules when it comes to transparency. As the Parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola doesn’t engage in legislative debate, and Ukko has stopped directly lobbying MEPs.
But as her plus-one, he’s had access to world leaders that are the envy of any consultant, with minimal disclosure requirements.
All conversation, no conflict
Sarah Knafo and Éric Zemmour
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French MEP Sarah Knafo is a vice-president of the European Parliament’s smallest group — the extreme-right Europe of Sovereign Nations, which is mostly made up of Alternative for Germany members. Despite her marginal position in Brussels, she and her partner Eric Zemmour, a famous (or infamous) far-right political commentator-turned-founder of the Reconquest party, managed to snag invites to U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration last month.
Knafo told POLITICO that the couple — she is 31, he is 66 — met through friends when she was studying at Sciences Po university. They work together.
“With our whole team we fine-tune the positions of Reconquest in Brussels to best defend the French people,” she said. She maintains that there are no conflicts of interest, but often conversations and debates between them.
Dionisios Sturis, Max Griera, Bartosz Brzeziński, Mathieu Pollet and Suzanne Lynch contributed reporting.
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