Wilfried Martens prime minister, described him as a "true statesman and one of the fathers of federal Belgium". Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, paid tribute to him as a "statesman of Belgium, Europe and an outstanding leader of European Parliament". Jerzy Buzek, EPP MEP and former prime minister of Poland, described him as "irreplaceable". The EPP think tank Centre for European Studies has been renamed after him, now being the "Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies", a decision taken during the EPP Congress in Dublin held on 9 March 2014. He received an Official State funeral, which was attended by
European Commissioner openly gay Commissioner. The first female Commissioners were Christiane Scrivener and Vasso Papandreou in the 1989 Delors Commission. European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek proposed in 2010 that Commissioners be directly elected, by member states placing their candidate at the top of their voting lists in European elections. That would give them individually, and the body as a whole, a democratic mandate. Each Member is required to take an oath before the Court of Justice of the European Union, officially the "Solemn Declaration before the Court of Justice of the European Union". As of December 2009, the Charter of Fundamental Rights