“The priority is for the European Commission to be up and running on December 1.” That is the phrase of the hangover left by the political crisis experienced in Brussels in the last ten days after the European People’s Party jeopardized the approval of the new community government with a delaying maneuver to satisfy the national interests of Alberto Núñez Feijóo that It also served to increase pressure on socialists and liberals to support Giorgia Meloni’s candidate as vice president. But the move has left wounds in the coalition that governs the EU.
The leader of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, betrayed the agreement reached with his socialist counterparts, Iratxe García, and liberal, Valérie Hayer, for the approval of the candidates for the leadership of the European Commission. The three decided the day before the vice presidents appointed by Von der Leyen passed their exam in the European Parliament to leave the evaluations until last and prevent some from being held hostage by others, especially Ribera, who was the last and to whom the EPP conditioned its support to that socialists and liberals swallowed the ‘toad’ of endorsing the Italian Raffaele Fitto.
Following Feijóo
But the next morning they both found out from the press that the EPP had no intention of giving approval to Ribera that day but would wait until the following week. The reason? Satisfy Feijóo, who had demanded it from Weber to wear down Pedro Sánchez’s candidate and win a victory, even if it lasted only a week, the time until the vice president appeared in Congress.
With that move, Weber stressed the situation to the maximum and at the same time launched an order at his co-religionist Von der Leyen, putting at risk the majority that supports his mandate. Even when the agreement was closed, the EPP forced the machine to the end by demanding the inclusion of an opinion in Ribera’s evaluation letter in which she tells her that she will have to resign if she is prosecuted by the DANA management. That demand blocked the final approval of 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 be vice president. None have binding effects.
The ‘Venezuela majority’
It was not the first time that Weber played the socialist and the liberal. A few weeks earlier, when the heads of the parliamentary groups had to approve the calendar of the exams of the 26 commissioners who will be part of the community government, Weber allied himself with the forces of the extreme right to agree on the agenda that interested him. Basically it meant leaving the Spanish socialist for last and, in this way, linking her future to Fitto’s.
The EPP thus consolidated the breaking of the sanitary cordon 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 ones got up from the negotiation table with socialists and liberals when they rejected the recognition of the opposition Edmundo González as president-elect of Venezuela and promoted a text with the forces of the extreme right that went ahead, distancing itself at that time from the strategy of the international community. which then involved pressuring the Government of Nicolás Maduro to publish the electoral records.
On the eve of giving the final approval to the new European Commission, there was another rupture of the groups that support it. The EPP carried out the Brussels proposal to delay the law against deforestation for one year with the votes of the extreme right and a part of the liberals and took the opportunity to include some amendments that further dilute the effectiveness of the regulations. Socialists, Greens, the left and part of the liberals abstained.
However, the EU governments, by a large majority with the exception of Italy and Luxembourg, rejected the changes that the right managed to push through and now a negotiation is beginning between the three institutions in which the negotiating mandate of the EU Council It is less constrained than that of the European Parliament, something that did not usually happen before and the balance was leaning towards more progressive positions.
A climate of mistrust from the beginning
With these threads of distrust, the legislature begins in which the majority that supports Von der Leyen is more affected than ever. Socialist sources are trying, however, to reduce the tension by reducing the clash of the last week to the push and pull of any negotiation.
However, socialists and liberals are the ones who have given the most in the agreement by ending up giving in with Meloni’s candidate as vice president of the community government. The original sin is in the July negotiation, when they practically gave a blank check to the German company, from which they barely managed to get a Housing commissioner and little else. It was, in fact, Von der Leyen who decided to bring the extreme 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, the Conservatives and Reformists group) has institutional positions in the European Parliament because the EPP does not apply the cordon sanitaire.
Nothing now forces Weber – nor Von der Leyen – to be faithful to socialists and liberals, which are the forces that make up the traditional European coalition. In fact, the EPP already pulled out when the leaders of the 27 closed the agreement for all the senior positions of the EU, which would fall to Von der Leyen, the socialist António Costa as president of the European Council, and the high representative , Kaja Kallas (liberal). At that time, the European Popular Party only confirmed the Portuguese for two and a half years given that the mandate in that institution is extendable for that period while the socialists assure that the pact was for five.
The end of 2026 will therefore be the litmus test. Also because it will be the moment of alternation in the European Parliament, where the presidency corresponds to half of the legislature to the EPP (now the Maltese Roberta Metsola) and the other half to the socialists (the Italians are in a good position for the position, who They are the main delegation, unless they give it to the PSOE in exchange for the leadership of the group now held by Iratxe García).
Beyond the mistrust, 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 uphill. “After the June elections we warned that there is only one possible majority, the one that voted for Von der Leyen in July. For the Commission as a whole, today we have lost that majority. Already tonight it has become clear how unstable it is. A bad week for European democracy,” said the group’s co-spokesperson, Bas Eickhou, after the agreement reached by the Popular Party, Socialists and Liberals, which includes ECR in the equation.
The Greens offered themselves as a guarantee of stability for a coalition that cannot take for granted the granite support of the three forces that supported it in the previous legislature. But the EPP prefers to look to its right and, furthermore, it has the capacity to assemble an alternative majority and does not intend to give it up, even if it means agreeing with the ultras.
#offensive #Ribera #Melonis #candidate #leaves #wounds #European #coalition
