Internal cracks loom as ECR makes new friends

Dear readers,

Welcome to EU Elections Decoded, your essential guide for staying up to date and receiving exclusive insights about the upcoming EU elections. I kickstart the newsletter with this first edition and will be alternating with our brilliant Eleonora Vasques every other week.

In today’s edition

ECR’s new friends may lead to internal cracks and ‘cherry-picking’ alliances.
Who is more green and social? Brace for a Socialist-Green electoral feud.
Congress season kicks off: Liberals lagging behind.
Flash updates: Exclusive interview with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, Eurosceptic voting patterns in rural regions, TikTok part of Parliament’s campaign, and more.

The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) Group’s new far-right friends have started making some more moderate national delegations uncomfortable.

Certifying a veer to the far-right, the group is set to bring on board France’s extremist far-right party Reconquête. At the same time, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, at odds with the rest of the bloc’s political forces, has said his Fidesz party intends to join the group after the EU elections, Italian media reported.

In response, Czechia’s ODS, one of the group’s founding members, stated that “Fidesz does not belong [in] ECR Group, and it is completely out of the question for me and many of us in the group,” MEP Veronika Vrecionová said, adding that “Orbán has nothing in common with the values of the ECR Group.” Read more.

Asked by our reporter Aneta Zachová about her plans should the group continue its far-right shift, Vrecionová did not deny the option of jumping ship and joining another group.

“Everything will be dealt with after the elections.”

ECR has come a long way since its beginnings in 2009 as a conservative, soft-Eurosceptic grouping, a brainchild of the UK’s Conservative Party and Czechia’s ODS, among others.

Over the years, the group has veered towards the right – and increasingly the far-right – following the hardening stance of one of its founding members, Poland’s PiS, as well as the addition of new far-right forces to the roster, such as Spain’s Vox, the Finns Party, and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia.

Meloni, who has transformed into a pro-European, constructive figure in the past year, will have to juggle with Fidesz’s constant attacks against the EU while stretching to maintain some sort of group cohesion among moderate sections and far-right sections – especially given a potential collaboration with the European People’s Party (EPP).

Cherry-picking in post-electoral alliances

With progressive forces increasingly shrinking, the far-right has started to gain in strength, and so will ECR if it confirms its expansion with Reconquête and Fidesz. With that, it could potentially become a kingmaker – or a serious veto power – in the next legislative term.

“Let’s see how this dichotomy [between moderate and far-right ECR delegations] will be resolved in the next legislature because the future president of the Commission will need votes from the ECR to get elected,” an EPP spokesperson told Euractiv.

The widening gap between ECR’s delegations may lead to a ‘cherry-picking’ scenario where the traditional pro-European forces collaborate with some delegations while vetoing others.

“At present, with ECR we already apply, alongside Renew and S&D, a kind of double standard. If you are from Meloni [Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia] or the [Belgian] NVA, it’s no problem. But if you’re PiS, we give them nothing,” the EPP spokesperson added.

Liberal Renew Europe group has already excluded cooperating with ECR as such, though.

Renew’s freshly elected president Valérie Hayer lashed out against them, stressing that “by welcoming Reconquête, the only thing ECR group has conquered is its definitive ban from political negotiations, even before the arrival of Orbán”. Hayer is part of France’s Renaissance party, which is shrinking to the benefit of the country’s far-right parties.

The EPP will most likely play on ambiguity and leave the decision for after the EU elections. “Making predictions about alliances now is absurd,” the EPP spokesperson said.

“Unlike Renew or S&D, we do not give moral lessons to anyone,” the spokesperson said, leaving the door to ECR wide open.

Who is who? Brace for a Socialist-Green feud

With both the European Green Party (EGP) and the Party of European Socialists (PES) building up their electoral campaign around a so-called ‘Green Social Deal,’ get ready for a battle of narratives to see who is greener, and who is more ‘social’. Check our stories on the Greens’ and Socialists’ manifestos.

The greens are already sharpening their knives, lashing out at the socialists’ hypocrisy and framing themselves as the true fighters for a socially just, green transition.

“You just look at the reality of implementation … and if you want to know who delivered on climate policy, it was the Greens. And if you look at who delivered on social policy, it was also the Greens,” Austrian Minister for Environment, Climate, and Energy Leonore Gewessler told me on the sidelines of the Greens’ congress in Lyon.

“And our minister of social affairs managed to implement the policy that the Social Democrats have only talked about for years,” he said.

While the Austrian Greens (Die Grünen) will compete for the same political space as the Socialists, the Dutch Greens (GroenLinks) have a less confrontational view and vouch for a more collaborative approach, as they are running on a joint list with the Socialists (PvdA).

“The more that Social Democrats and Greens are doing this together, the better because the big fight is on the conservative side … the enemy is on the right,” Dutch MEP and the EGP’s lead candidate Bas Eickhout told me.

Still, Eickhout remains somewhat wary of the socialists and ready to fight back, if needed.

“If they are going to attack us, we are going to challenge them on their voting behaviour: They supported the CAP, they supported these agriculture policies, so let’s also be honest about it,” he said.

Congress season kicks off: Everything you need to know

The European Green Party kickstarted electoral congress season this past weekend (2-4 February) with a grand gathering in Lyon to close ranks ahead of an uphill campaign, where they pledged to cater to farmers and doubling down on climate ambitions despite the German delegation trying to water-down targets. Read my long-read dispatch from Lyon.

“It’s a safe choice, people are scared,” a delegate told me before the formal election of heavyweight MEPs Terry Reinke and Bas Eickhout as the party’s lead candidates, snubbing southern and eastern hopefuls with less clout.

Just like the European Parliament and the European Commission, the Greens hope to boost their chances with an army of influencers, as the party campaign team armed with QR codes roamed Lyon asking attendees with a high number of social media followers to sign up and help the cause.

You can hear more of my adventures from Lyon in this magnificent podcast by Evi Kiorri, Miriam Sáenz de Tejada and Nicoletta Ionta.

The Liberals have quite a quagmire to address ahead of the elections, as all the factions need to agree on a common electoral platform under the Renew Europe group umbrella – ALDE, EDP, and independent parties, such as France’s Renaissance.

They have a lot to catch up on as the platform “was at a bit of a standstill (…) we’re at the very beginning of the process, but we need to speed things up,” a senior source from Renew, close to the matter, told us.

The liberals may go into the campaign headed by three or more “operational, not political” lead candidates as each faction is welcome to bring forward their own “profile”, two high-ranking liberals told us. However, no final decision has been made.

While ALDE, EDP, and Renaissance will likely have their own, the door is “open” for other independent parties of Renew to put forward names.

The “Renew Europe Now” electoral platform will be launched on the 20 March in Brussels while ALDE’s party congress – the faction that brings together the most national parties – is set to take place earlier the same day when they will elect the lead candidate and approve the manifesto, which lashes out at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and seeks a single market revival, we reported.

The European People’s Party congress will take place in Bucharest on 6-7 March, where von der Leyen is widely expected to be elected as the lead candidate. The deadline to place her bid for the EU top job post is 21 February, and she is expected to announce during a gathering of her CDU party in Germany on 19 February. Poland’s Civic Coalition and Greece’s New Democracy will likely be key drivers of her campaign.

Several EPP national delegations have clashed over the manifesto’s wording as the original version called for the introduction of qualified majority voting. Read more about EPP’s electoral pledges, which include the revision of key Green Deal files.

The Party of European Socialists congress is scheduled for 2 March in Rome, where the lead candidate, Luxembourgish Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, is expected to be formally elected, alongside the approval of the party’s manifesto.

The European Left Party congress will be held in Ljubljana on 24-25 February. A widely unknown politician, Austrian communist Walter Baier, is confirmed to be the secretariat’s pick for the lead candidate. He will have a hard time rallying the leftist troops, though, as national parties are increasingly fragmented in key countries like Germany, Spain, and Greece.

Flash updates

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola expressed doubts on the lead candidate system viability in the upcoming EU elections, as “it will be a big question whether that will work”, she said, while affirming she supports a centrist approach to combat political extremism, calling on citizens not to vote for extremism out of frustration. She remained tight-lipped about whether she will run again for the European Parliament presidency. More in the interview with Eleonora Vasques.

Rural areas have more Eurosceptic voting patterns, says report. A report by the Committee of the Regions (CoR) confirms concerns that farmers could become an important vote pool for far-right parties in the forthcoming elections, as the findings suggest that anti-EU discourse has more support in rural areas. Our agri expert Maria Simon Arboledas reports.

European Parliament will use TikTok for EU electoral campaign despite ban. The European Parliament is preparing to use TikTok during the upcoming election campaign despite EU institutions banning it from corporate devices last year due to cybersecurity concerns, the press service confirmed to Eleonora Vasques. Read more.

Far-right ID faces unity test as it seeks a seat at the table. The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) party, recently plagued by major infighting, is looking to patch up the bonds between its national parties in preparation for a European Parliament that will likely veer to the right following the EU elections. Kjeld Neubert has the story.

French Socialist Party’s EU election list deemed too elitist. France’s Socialist Party is facing internal turmoil over its EU election list, which some in the party believe excludes “workers and employees”, according to a letter from federations and elected officials, Théo Bourgery-Gonse reported from Paris.

Additional reporting by Théo Bourgery-Gonse and Aneta Zachová.

If you’d like to contact us for tips or comments, drop me a line at [email protected], or to Eleonora at [email protected]

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alexandra Brzozowski]