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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots and our Saturday edition. So after days of negotiations,

this week the biggest European parties have finally agreed on a series of candidates to fill

the top jobs in Brussels over the next five years. If European Parliament approves, these

newcomers will replace John Kold Juncker and Donald Tusk, among other roles. So who are the

candidates and what implications would their appointment have on the future Brexit negotiations?

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Henry Newman, Director of Open Europe and Charles Grant,

director for the Centre for European Reforms. Charles, just to start, can you give us a rundown

the most important names to know

and who they are pitched to be replacing? Well, the two most important jobs are the head of the

European Central Bank, who's in charge of the Euro, and the head of the European Commission,

which is the EU Civil Service, but also sets its political agenda. The central bank,

they've gone for Christine Lagarde, the current head of

the International Monetary Fund and a former French finance minister. That's quite a controversial appointment

because she's firstly a woman, there's never been a senior woman in the ECB before, but also she's

not a professional economist. She's a lawyer by training. But she is economically literates, and most people

regard her as competent. So she's going to get the European Central Bank.

Then for the European Commission, they've gone for the surprise candidate,

the University of von der Leyen, the first woman head of the European Commission,

the German Defence Minister for the last five or six years,

...