‘Heterogeneous’ EU liberals plagued by disunity on key issues

Four years after the party of French President Emmanuel Macron took the leadership of the liberals in the EU Parliament, rebranding them as Renew Europe, the group remains far from being a cohesive political platform with divides on key issues threatening its influence.

Parties within Renew are split on several salient issues, exclusive new data shows. Group sources privately voiced frustration about the pro-market German FDP leading a rogue camp, including Mark Rutte’s VVD and Denmark’s Venstre, which repeatedly rebels against the group majority on green policies and business regulation.

The five FDP MEPs, in particular, voted against key green legislation such as the phase-out of combustion-engine cars and the Energy Performance of Buildings directive. They also rejected the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence directive, which requires businesses to enforce sustainability standards across their supply chains.

“We can definitely say that the FDP is at odds with the direction of the group on some topics, especially those that are particularly salient at the moment,” Davide Ferrari, head of research at EU Matrix, an EU research platform, told Euractiv.

The divide shows most prominently in the group’s voting patterns, according to data obtained for Euractiv by EU Matrix.

Most members have aligned with the group majority in more than 90% of votes in the European Parliament in this mandate.

However, the “rebels” refused to back the group majority in more than one in ten cases, a “relatively low value” regarding voting alignment, Ferrari said.

Split between business and environment

Renew’s fractious cohesion betrays an ideological split, as a former Renew MEP who spoke to Euractiv on the condition of anonymity recalled that there had always been ideological tensions between the business-friendly parts of the group and environmentally-oriented ones.

“It seemed to me like the FDP were irritated when people [raised environmental issues] – they would just go ‘business, business, business’,” the MEP said, adding that the group still managed to strike compromises in previous terms.

Things changed when Macron’s party joined the group following the 2019 European elections, making up a quarter of the group’s MEPs, claiming the leadership for Stéphane Séjourné and forcing a name change from ALDE to Renew.

The arrival of the “more progressive” party reduced the group’s ability to find the “lowest common denominator”, a current Renew MEP who asked not to be named noted.

“The French were possibly not as used to doing [consensus-oriented] parliamentary democracy,” mused the former MEP.

Ulrike Müller, an MEP of the Free Voters, another German Renew member, agreed:

“[The French] think differently, they don’t think so much about subsidiarity, but rather give orders from the top and then things work,” she said, adding that her delegation was thus often representing “a German line” with the FDP to counterbalance the “French dominance.”

While the FDP stressed that any disagreements were not grounded in nationalities, there were “at times different approaches”, the leader of the FDP delegation, Nicola Beer, told Euractiv.

Open confrontation

Rebellions against the group line have increased in this term as “[right-leaning] parties have been struggling [with the] new direction”, Ferrari noted.

Notably, five of the nine parties with the lowest level of voting alignment among the three major groups in the European Parliament belong to Renew, including prominently the FDP.

Simmering tensions burst into the open earlier this year after Germany’s FDP Transport Minister Volker Wissing pulled out of a deal to ban combustion-engine cars from 2035 at the last minute.

The move prompted Emma Wiesner, a Renew MEP from the left-leaning Swedish Centerpartiet, to take the podium in the European Parliament and scold her FDP colleagues in Germany’s government.

“I’m speaking to you as a young European and a liberal: please (…) stop blocking crucial parts of our climate package such as the combustion-engine ban,” the Swede pleaded in German.

Another open confrontation over the group line on EU fiscal policy was narrowly avoided in May when Renew compromised on a set of vague joint principles, papering over the divide between Renaissance’s advocacy for flexibility and the notoriously austere German line.

Internally, there is a sense of frustration: At a recent group event, a Renew staffer openly questioned the FDP’s group membership, adding “they feel like a regular right-wing party”. In turn, some French MEPs are seen as “basically Greens” in FDP circles.

Kingmaker role on the line

To the public, however, Renew representatives put on a brave face.

People close to Renaissance and the leadership admit that “many different liberal traditions and countries” come together within the group, with the Germans diverging more often. But they prefer to see it as the testimony of the “great tradition of respect for different sensitivities” within Renew.

“Any differences are communicated transparently upfront and there are no surprises in the voting behaviour,” a spokesperson for Renew told Euractiv.

However, its disarray has threatened Renew’s influential position as a powerbroker and kingmaker able to elicit concessions from the Socialists and Democrats and the conservative EPP, which often depend on support from Renew MEPs to build majorities.

The spokesperson pointed out that the party remained on the winning side in around 94% of votes (August 2023) and thus more often than other major groups. Yet a source close to the FDP admitted that the group was losing influence on key issues such as environmental legislation due to the split.

EU Matrix data shows that the FDP barely supports the group regarding those policies, with convergence in less than half of the votes.

Four years after Macron’s Renaissance took the reins of the liberal camp to promote his EU reform agenda, they are far from being a reliable promotor of his agenda in Europe.

“It is probably hard to dictate anything from the top in this group,” a senior S&D MEP observed, calling Renew “less hierarchical than for instance the EPP” and “perhaps the most heterogeneous group”.

A Renew source offered a glass-half-full reading: “We agree on the essentials.”

(Additional reporting by Kjeld Neubert)

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]