“The priority is for the European Commission to be operational on December 1.” It is the expression of the hangover left by the political crisis experienced in Brussels over the last ten days after the European People’s Party compromised the approval of the new community government through a delaying maneuver to satisfy the national interests of ‘Alberto Núñez Feijóo whom he also served. increase pressure on socialists and liberals to support Giorgia Meloni’s vice-presidential candidate. But this decision left wounds within the coalition that governs the EU.
The leader of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, betrayed the agreement concluded with his socialist counterparts, Iratxe García, and liberal, Valérie Hayer, for the approval of candidates for the leadership of the European Commission. The three decided, the day before the successful examination of the vice-presidents appointed by Von der Leyen in the European Parliament, to leave the evaluations until the end and to avoid some being taken hostage by others, notably Ribera, who was the last and on whom the EPP conditioned its support for the socialists and liberals swallowed the “toad” of the Italian Raffaele Fitto.
Follow Feijoo
But the next morning they both learned through the press that the EPP did not intend to give its consent to Ribera that day, but would wait until the following week. The reason? Satisfy Feijóo, who had demanded it from Weber to exhaust the candidate of Pedro Sánchez and achieve a victory, although it only lasted a week, the time for the vice president to appear in Congress.
With this decision, Weber stressed the situation to the maximum and at the same time issued an order to his co-religionist Von der Leyen, endangering the majority that supports his mandate. Even once the agreement was reached, the EPP pushed the machine to the limit by demanding the inclusion of a notice in Ribera’s evaluation letter in which she tells him that she will have to resign if she is prosecuted in justice by the management of DANA. This demand blocked final approval from the vice presidents for four hours and resulted in a similar comment from socialists and liberals in Fitto’s document, where they tell Von der Leyen that he should not to be vice-president. None has any binding effect.
The “Venezuelan majority”
This was not the first time that Weber played the role of socialist and liberal. A few weeks earlier, when the heads of the parliamentary groups had to approve the schedule of examinations of the 26 commissioners who will be part of the community government, Weber allied himself with the far-right forces to agree on the agenda that interested him. Basically, this meant leaving the Spanish socialist until last and thus linking her future to that of Fitto.
The EPP thus consolidated the breaking of the cordon santé for ultra groups, including Alternative for Germany and other phil-Nazi groups, which had begun with the approval of a resolution on Venezuela. The popular people got up from the negotiating table with the socialists and liberals when they rejected the recognition of the opposition Edmundo González as elected president of Venezuela and promoted a text with the far-right forces that advanced, thus distancing itself from the strategy of the international community which then consisted of putting pressure on the government of Nicolas Maduro to publish the electoral results.
On the eve of giving final approval to the new European Commission, there has been a further rupture among the groups supporting it. The EPP implemented Brussels’ proposal to delay the law against deforestation for a year with the votes of the far right and part of the liberals and took the opportunity to include some amendments that further dilute the law. the effectiveness of regulation. The socialists, the Greens, the left and part of the liberals abstained.
However, the EU governments, with the exception of Italy and Luxembourg, have rejected by a large majority the changes that the right managed to get adopted and now a negotiation is opening between the three institutions in which the negotiating mandate of the Council of the EU is less constrained than that of the European Parliament, which did not usually happen before and the balance tilted towards more progressive positions.
A climate of distrust from the start
With these threads of distrust, the legislature begins in which the majority that supports Von der Leyen is more affected than ever. Socialist sources, however, are trying to reduce the tension by reducing last week’s confrontation to a back-and-forth of any negotiation.
However, it was the socialists and liberals who gave the most in the agreement, eventually giving in with Meloni’s candidate for vice-president of the community government. The original sin lies in the July negotiations, when they practically gave a blank check to the German company, from which they barely managed to get a housing commissioner and nothing else. It was actually Von der Leyen who decided to bring the far right to the top of the EU under the pretext that it followed the structure of the European Parliament. However, Meloni’s political family (ECR, Conservatives and Reformists group) occupies institutional positions in the European Parliament because the EPP does not apply the cordon santé.
Nothing now obliges Weber – nor Von der Leyen – to be loyal to the socialists and liberals, who are the forces that make up the traditional European coalition. In fact, the EPP already withdrew when the leaders of the 27 reached the agreement for all the top EU posts, which would go to Von der Leyen, the socialist António Costa as president of the European Council and the high representative. Kaja Kallas (liberal). At the time, the European People’s Party had only confirmed the Portuguese for two and a half years, given that the mandate in this institution was extendable for this period, while the socialists assured that the pact was for five years.
The end of 2026 will therefore be the decisive test. Also because it will be the moment of alternation in the European Parliament, where the presidency corresponds for half of the legislature to the EPP (today the Maltese Roberta Metsola) and the other half to the Socialists (the Italians are in a good position for the position, which They constitute the main delegation, unless they cede it to the PSOE in exchange for the leadership of the group now held by Iratxe García).
Beyond the distrust, the agreement signed this week, which will have to be ratified on Wednesday in Strasbourg with the vote of the entire European Commission, makes the support of the Greens difficult. “After the June elections, we warned that there was only one possible majority, the one that voted for Von der Leyen in July. For the Commission as a whole, we have today lost this majority. Already this evening it has become clear how unstable the situation is. A bad week for European democracy,” declared the group’s co-spokesperson, Bas Eickhou, after the agreement reached by the Popular, Socialist and Liberal Party, which includes the ECR in the equation.
The Greens presented themselves as a guarantee of stability for a coalition which cannot take for granted the granite support of the three forces which supported it during the previous legislature. But the EPP prefers to look to the right and, moreover, it has the capacity to bring together an alternative majority and does not intend to give it up, even if it means reaching an agreement with the ultras.
