If you want to know how the post-election negotiations for the EU’s top jobs and a new European Parliament coalition will play out, just look at how the campaign has unfolded.
Ursula von der Leyen, the incumbent Commission president, has led the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) campaign on a platform of stability, economic competitiveness, stronger defence and the rule of law. She has played down the European Green Deal—the signature policy of her first term—and opened the door to potential cooperation with right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who chairs the hard right European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) group.
The EPP is set to top the June 6-9 poll yet fall well short of a majority in the 720-seat Parliament. It wants to pull the next Commission towards the right, responding to public pressure for less intrusive climate and environmental regulation and more attention to business and farmers’ concerns. Her centrist and centre-left partners in the outgoing legislature have other ideas and are warning her against any deal with the hard right.
All the media attention is on the expected surge of the Eurosceptical far-right and its implications for the EU’s uncertain future. Yet even as the anti-immigration populists are projected to increase their seats to up to one-quarter of the Parliament, the far-right is divided and in turmoil. In the outgoing legislature, it was split between two groups – the national conservative ECR and the more radical Identity and Democracy (ID) group. Some hard-right parties, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, sat in neither group.
Those affiliations are in flux as parties that seek to break out of isolation and gain a foothold in national government are distancing themselves from far-right peers that remain more radicalised. So for example, France’s National Rally broke off ties with Alternative for Germany and had it expelled from the ID group last month after the AfD was involved in a series of embarrassing controversies. Old lines are shifting, but there seems little chance of the far-right forming a single, cohesive group that could wield influence in the next Parliament.
Meloni’s price
While von der Leyen aims to continue working with her previous coalition of EPP, the liberal Renew Europe group and the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), she may struggle to find enough votes among those forces to be re-elected as president. Some of those MEPs, notably among the French opposition Socialists and French centre-right Les Republicains, are committed to vote against her because they say she is too close to French President Emmanuel Macron. So she may need extra votes to secure the required absolute 361-seat majority. Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy (FI) could potentially provide those vital swing votes, but at what price?
Von der Leyen made clear in last month’s EBU debate that Meloni meets her three criteria of being pro-European, pro-rule of law and pro-Ukraine. However, she also said she was not talking about making a deal with the ECR as a whole, since the group includes Eurosceptics such as Poland’s Law and Justice party, which undermined the independence of the judiciary and public media while in power. Whether she can peel Meloni away from her less palatable parliamentary partners will be one feature of the post-election negotiations.
The Italian prime minister would inevitably demand policy concessions in return for her support, most likely on her signature issue of migration. She may try to make von der Leyen commit to put forward extra proposals to offshore the processing of asylum seekers to third countries, along the lines demanded by 15 governments, including Italy, even before the EU’s new migration pact comes into force. That would infuriate the left.
Left-wing parties stand firm against far-right alliances
Liberal and left-wing parties, including Renew Europe, S&D, the Greens and the Left, signed a joint declaration ”in defence of democracy” last month vowing not to form an alliance with hard right forces under any circumstances, and urging von der Leyen “to firmly reject any normalisation, cooperation or alliance with far-right and radical parties”. The EPP refused to sign the statement, accusing the Socialists of playing politics with it.
So if von der Leyen manages to secure Meloni’s support, she may face opposition from her other partners, who have ruled out any deal with the hard right. However S&D lead candidate Nicolas Schmit has said that since the parliamentary vote on the choice of Commission president is held by a secret ballot, no one can know for sure who voted for the successful candidate. Some Renew Europe MEPs have brought into play the name of former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, author of an eagerly awaited forthcoming report on how Europe can restore its economic competitiveness, as a potential alternative Commission president.
Yet Renew Europe has its own internal contradictions on dealing with the far-right.
Its main Dutch liberal affiliate, VVD, has already breached that cross-party declaration by entering into a coalition agreement forged by the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders. Renew Europe has not taken any action against the VVD so far, but the Socialists and Greens may well make an issue of this in the talks.
The Socialists would rather that von der Leyen brought the Greens into her pro-European coalition to make up the numbers rather than seeking to pick off votes to the right of her. That would mean making policy concessions on a faster implementation of the EU’s energy transition, just when conservative and EPP interest groups, such as car manufacturers and farmers, are seeking to slow it down. That tug-of-war will be another feature of the negotiations.
Coalition of losers?
The Greens were in opposition from 2019 to 2024 although they frequently voted for European Green Deal legislation after battling in parliament to try to toughen it up. They have never been part of the coalition that steers the EP and carves up top parliamentary jobs, and they do not hold any seats in the European Council of national government leaders.
They are forecast to lose up to one-third of their EP seats due to a backlash against green policies notably in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Austria, so they may need to enter an informal alliance with the S&D and Renew Europe to carry more weight in the incoming parliament.
Ironically, forming a coalition of losers (S&D and Renew Europe are also projected to lose seats), may be the best chance to apply pressure on the EPP to stick to a green, pro-European, reformist agenda and eschew any alliance with the forces to its right. This would be highly frustrating for those in the EPP who feel they were dragooned into supporting left-wing and green legislation over the last five years and want that to change after this election. But hey, that’s politics!
Some in the EPP may dream of peeling Meloni away from ECR completely and welcoming her into the centre-right parliamentary family. However, she would surely lose some support at home if she were perceived as joining the “bureaucratic EU establishment” which she lambasted in campaign speeches. And besides, she has more leverage by being von der Leyen’s indispensable interlocutor while retaining her position as queen of the culturally conservative nationalist right.