I’d heard of the first three authors before I saw that article: László Andor, Pervenche Berès, Joan Burton.
What struck me is that they could be described as “B list” politicians.
Andor is a European Commissioner, but has the Employment and Social Affairs porfolio which is not where the key policy decisions lie. Berès is an excellent MEP, and has written some strong reports on the crisis that the European Parliament has adopted, but for all that she is still just an MEP. (Her work in the EP suggests to me that she might be the brains of the quintet who wrote the Guardian article.) Joan Burton’s department is not the key one in driving policy here either.