The uneasy relationship between the three political groups who have long made up the centre majority governing in the European Parliament came close to collapse this week, signalling a rocky few years to come.
The willingness of the largest grouping, the centre right European People’s Party (EPP), to side with more extreme nationalist and far-right groups ahead of its traditional dance partners is driving the tensions.
After European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen settled on what jobs to give EU commissioners nominated by each member state, the spotlight shifted to the parliament. MEPs had to approve or reject the new commissioners following confirmation hearings.
Initially things were running smoothly, with commissioners-to-be including Michael McGrath waived through without much fuss. The established majority of the EPP, the centre left Socialists & Democrats (S&D) and smaller centrist group Renew voted together as usual. Then relations went south when MEPs got to the nominated commissioners from Italy and Spain.
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The S&D pushed back against Raffaele Fitto being made one of six “executive vice-presidents” in the next commission team as he comes from Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right party. Despite the Brothers of Italy sitting in the more populist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, the EPP backed Fitto like one of its own.
The EPP then used the hearings to heap blame for the handling of the devastating floods in Valencia on Teresa Ribera, a Spanish minister from the S&D family, who was to be commissioner for the green transition and competition policy. The move was an attempt to provide cover for the EPP’s Spanish members, the Popular Party, who lead the opposition nationally but control the regional authority in Valencia.
After a week-long Mexican standoff both the EPP and S&D walked back down their respective hills, agreeing together to approve Fitto and Ribera as well as five other commissioners whose confirmations had been on ice. That clears the way for MEPs to approve the second von der Leyen commission as a whole in a vote on Wednesday, allowing the EU executive to start work.
However, the damage to relations within the centre governing majority will not be easily mended. The concerns of S&D, Renew and also the Greens go far beyond the Italian commissioner from Meloni’s party. Led by the conservative German politician Manfred Weber, the EPP has been willing to ditch its usual centre partners to instead side with more extreme right-wing MEPs on votes.
The arithmetic in the parliament allows the EPP to pivot to this alternative right-wing majority, made up with Meloni’s ECR group, Viktor Orban and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Patriots grouping, and the even more extreme Alternative for Germany (AfD). Weber recently walked the EPP to vote with these populist and far-right groups to postpone new EU deforestation regulations.
If Ribera’s commissioner job had become a casualty of the recent tussle the S&D would likely have collapsed the whole house of cards and voted against von der Leyen’s entire commission team. “It’s a very fine line that he is walking,” one EPP source said of Weber.
It is understood Polish prime minister Donald Tusk and Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, two senior figures in the EPP family, put in calls to Weber to push him to cool the brinkmanship. Von der Leyen is also believed to have been uneasy with Weber bringing things to the edge.
The reliability of his alternative right-wing majority to be able to pass rather than oppose legislation is doubtful. If the EPP insists on regularly voting with the far-right when it suits it, it will create uncomfortable questions for its more moderate members, particularly Fine Gael.
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