© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

In an unprecedented move, the European Parliament’s internal market and industry committees overwhelmingly voted on Thursday to reject Sylvie Goulard, the French nominee, to become the next EU internal market commissioner. As a result, the commission of incoming president Ursula von der Leyen will not start on November 1 as planned—and there is even speculation in some quarters she may never start.

Though the rejection is ostensibly over potential ethics issues during her time as an MEP, it has more to do with the parliament’s unfinished business from its battle with French President Emmanuel Macron this summer. Though the Parliament warned they would only confirm one of the official election candidates to become European Commission president, Macron disregarded their warnings and refused to honor their system for electing the commission president. (According to the EU treaties, Macron had every right to do so, as they stipulate that the European Council—the group of heads of governments—picks the commission president.)

Macron instead put forward Ursula von der Leyen, the German defense minister, who was not a candidate during the EU elections in May. In the end the parliament backed down from its threats and confirmed her by just nine votes. But she only made it across the line because of support from far-right parties in Hungary and Poland.

“Resentment? Pettiness?”

Macron may have thought he was out of the woods—that the parliament was all bark and no bite. But yesterday MEPs, led by rejected center-right Spitzenkandidat Manfred Weber, took their delayed revenge.

Macron was left stunned. “I need to understand what played out,” he said at a press conference. “Resentment? Pettiness?”

He said von der Leyen had assured him Goulard would pass, and that she had been personally told this by center-right EPP leader Weber and center-left S&D leader Iratxe Garcia Perez. But Weber and Garcia Perez deny having any such conversation with von der Leyen, who has not responded to Macron’s accusation.

Macron’s assertion that this has more to do with institutional politics than Goulard’s qualifications is shared by most people in Brussels. The EPP itself made this more than obvious when it accidentally sent out a tweet yesterday before the vote with a WhatsApp conversation in the background saying, “Guys we are going to kill her in the vote later but do not say.” The tweet has since been deleted.

The stated reason for rejecting Goulard, a close ally of Macron, is allegations that she used a European Parliament assistant for domestic political work while she was an MEP in 2009. There was also discontent over the fact that while she was an MEP she was receiving $10,000 a month from a US consultancy firm for whom she appears to have done little work.

But this explanation doesn’t quite hold water. Though it might be distasteful, there is nothing illegal about having a second job as an MEP and Goulard fully disclosed what she was earning. Almost a third of MEPs have such second jobs, according to public data, with many earning far more than Goulard.

As for the payment scandal, though she has been questioned by investigators there has been no formal investigation launched against her. After a tough first round of grilling she promised MEPs that she would resign if she was ever found guilty of improperly using her MEP funds. There were far more serious doubts about the ethics and competence of other nominees, but they sailed through.

MEPs also had objections to her very broad portfolio, but in truth it is not that much bigger than in previous commissions.

Von der Leyen Is in Trouble, Again

Every five years, these confirmation hearings are often more about political games than the actual competencies of the nominees. The European Parliament wants to flex its muscles and show it can’t be pushed around by the other EU institutions, so it always rejects at least one nominee. But this year, after suffering such a humiliating climb-down in July, it had more to prove than normal.

The parliament had already rejected two Eastern European nominees even before their hearings—from Hungary and Romania. They were deemed by the legal affairs committee to have conflicts of interest. Given that the two governments who nominated them are political pariahs accused of violating the rule of law, the rejections were not that surprising.

The Hungarian was from the EPP, and the Romanian was from S&D. Those two groups then focused their attention on Goulard and Macron’s Renew Europe group of liberals, the third largest in the parliament.

Clearly, the parliament was not content with just catching the usual Eastern European small fish. They wanted a big fish to show Macron they can’t be trifled with—and that big fish was Goulard. She is only the second nominee to ever be rejected from a Western European country; the first being Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione in 2004 who was voted down for his homophobic views.

Lacking a Majority

This wasn’t just a humiliation for Macron, it has also critically wounded von der Leyen. Her own EPP group, which is led by Weber, has very publicly and ostentatiously disobeyed her. They also apparently disregarded an intervention by Angela Merkel, who urged them not to do anything that would delay the new commission’s start date on November 1—a crucial time with Brexit scheduled for October 31.

That the EPP ignored both of these women shows that von der Leyen does not command a majority in the parliament. This was always the worry with her very slim confirmation victory. Like Goulard, von der Leyen has found herself stuck in the middle of an institutional power battle she did not start. And some people in Brussels are questioning whether she can survive.

Von der Leyen, after all, has only passed one out of two confirmation votes. She must still be confirmed by the parliament again, along with her college of 28 commissioners. Under the EU treaties a commission cannot start work until it has been approved by the parliament. If there is no majority for any commission led by von der Leyen, then a new president would have to be found.

With the collapse of the Romanian government this week delaying a new nominee from Bucharest, there is now no prospect of von der Leyen’s commission being approved before the intended November 1 start date. Von der Leyen tacitly admitted this herself in a statement following Goulard’s rejection.

A delay itself is not a mortal blow, and indeed von der Leyen may be breathing a sigh of relief that there is now no risk her first day will be occupied by a no-deal Brexit. But if she cannot get a confirmation for her college by December 1, people will start asking whether they need to start over with a new president.

It’s a road few want to go down, and the parliament is likely to be content having taken their revenge against Macron. But MEPs may have kicked off a tit-for-tat process that could snowball out of control.

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© REUTERS/Yves Herman

In national parliaments confirmation hearings for government nominees are often more about theater than substance. The European Parliament is no different, and this week has already seen its fair share of drama in Brussels.

Before she can take office on November 1, incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen must have her entire team of 26 commissioners approved by the European Parliament. And historically, at the start of each term MEPs like to reject one nominee in order to flex their muscles.

Given the humiliation the parliament suffered in July over the failed Spitzenkandidaten process, it was clear from the start that MEPs would be out for more blood than usual this year. But nobody predicted that the parliament would reject two candidates even before the hearings began.

Last week the legal affairs committee exercised its new powers for the first time by finding that Romanian nominee Rovana Plumb and Hungarian nominee László Trócsányi had too many conflicts of interest to even have a hearing. This in turn prompted an angry response from MEPs not on that committee, feeling robbed of their chance to grill the nominees. Power games all around.

The parliament’s leadership asked the committee to reconsider and vote again, and when it again rejected the two nominees, Budapest and Bucharest begrudgingly withdrew them. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has nominated career diplomat Olivér Várhelyi as a replacement, and Romania’s embattled prime minister Viorica Dăncilă, barely clinging on to power at home as she faces a no-confidence vote, has issued von der Leyen an ultimatum.

She has nominated a man, Romanian MEP Dan Nica, as a replacement – knowing full well that this will upset the impressive gender parity ratio von der Leyen was keen to trumpet when she announced her commissioners earlier this month. She has floated a second name, Gabriela Ciot, but said she will only put her forward if Hungary puts forward a woman also. It isn’t entirely clear what she’s playing at, but there are likely discussions happening now between her, von der Leyen and Orbán that could involve a portfolio swap. Hungary was supposed to be getting the enlargement portfolio, while Romania was to get the transport portfolio.

Poor Polish Performance

The confirmation hearings started in Brussels on Monday, and on day two Poland’s nominee Janusz Wojciechowski, slated to become the new agriculture commissioner, ran into trouble with the parliament’s agriculture committee. MEPs said he did not seem to have adequately prepared, that his answers were vague and garbled, and that he contradicted himself during the hearing in an effort to agree with every MEP questioning him.

Even without the poor performance on policy issues, there was a question mark over Wojciechowski. He is part of Poland’s governing Law and Justice party, accused of dismantling democratic institutions and disrespecting the rule of law. He is also under investigation by the EU’s anti-fraud office for misuse of funds while he was an MEP.

To make matters worse, his party is not in any of the Parliament’s main political groups but instead in the much unloved European Conservatives and Reformists, the breakaway group created in 2009 by David Cameron. It is currently the second-smallest group in the parliament, with only the far-left being smaller. While the Hungarian nominee benefits from being part of Angela Merkel’s European Peoples Party, the largest group in the parliament, the Polish nominee has no such protection.

From his face, it was clear Wojciechowski knew he was in trouble at the end of his hearing, when committee chair Norbert Lins asked MEPs for a round of applause and was met with silence in return. At a minimum, it appears he will be brought back for further questioning. But some MEPs are already saying they will vote against him, which would mean Poland has to nominate someone else. This is already Warsaw’s second nominee. The government originally put forward Krzysztof Szczerski, the head of President Andrej Duda’s cabinet, but he withdrew following a meeting with von der Leyen for reasons that are still unclear.

The Underrepresented East

The confirmation troubles are part of a larger EU problem of under-representation for Eastern Europe at the start of this new term. Already in July, when the EU’s five top jobs were awarded to a German, a Belgian, a Spaniard, an Italian, and a Frenchwoman, it did not go unnoticed that this completely excluded Eastern Europe—a notable absence after the council presidency of former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk. With von der Leyen promising to make Dutchman Frans Timmermans and Dane Margrethe Vestager “executive vice presidents” in a deal to secure conformation by the European Parliament (they were both Spitzenkandidaten), the Western orientation of the new EU leadership was starting to look obscene.

Von der Leyen appointed a third executive vice president – Valdis Dombrovsksis from Latvia, saying at her press conference that this would rectify the situation and provide geographic balance. But many have noted that Dombrovskis has a much smaller role than the other two deputies, and fewer staff. And some in the “Visegrad Four” (encompassing Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) have grumbled that the Baltic states shouldn’t count toward meeting an Eastern Europe quota.

With the core Eastern states being made to field new, more technocratic commissioner nominees, their influence in this commission will decrease even further. This comes at a time when nationalist parties unfriendly toward the EU have powerful voice in the East.

On the third day of hearings, two western nominees with potential corruption problems—Belgium’s Didier Reynders and France’s Sylvie Goulard—faced some difficult questions. But MEPs appeared reassured about the allegations against Reynders, given that a Belgian prosecutor has mostly cleared him of fault. And Goulard, who was interviewed by French authorities for potential ethical lapses while she was an MEP, may be protected by her alliance with Emmanuel Macron. Reynders and Goulard are part of Macron’s liberal Renew Europe group, the third-largest in the parliament. MEPs may not be keen to pick a fight with the French president.

And so once again the European Parliament has set its crosshair on Eastern nominees as the sacrificial lambs of the confirmation process. Last time around, in 2014, in was the former Slovenian prime minister Alenka Bratušek who was rejected. This time, it may be three nominees from the east.

The geographic disparity may just be an unfortunate coincidence. But at a time when politics in Eastern Europe are become increasingly hostile toward the EU and liberal democracy in general, it’s not a great look.

The post Trouble for Von Der Leyen’s Eastern Flank appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© Virginia Mayo/Pool via REUTERS

At the start of Sunday’s extraordinary summit to choose the next European Commission President, it looked like Frans Timmermans was the man to beat.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had negotiated a compromise for the EU’s package of top jobs on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan days before. The plan, crafted with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Spain’s Acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, and the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte, would see Timmermans, the candidate of the center-left Party of European Socialists (PES), get the commission presidency.

The candidate of her center-right European Peoples Party (EPP), Manfred Weber, would be consigned to splitting the presidency of the European Parliament between himself and Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt. It would be a humiliating blow for him, given that the role is similar to the Speaker of the House in the United Kingdom, and has little political power.

As compensation, the EPP would get the presidency of the European Council. The High Representative for Foreign Affairs would be a liberal.

The result would have been a significant concession from the EPP, which has held the commission presidency for the last 15 years. But it was one that acknowledged that, though it came first in the European elections of May 26, the EPP has fallen a long way from its iron grip on power in Europe over the past two decades. As Macron had noted, it is time for a new direction in European leadership.

Revolt of the Prime Ministers

However, Merkel’s fellow leaders in the EPP didn’t agree. When the plan was presented to a pre-summit meeting of the EU’s eight EPP prime ministers, they revolted.

The most vociferous objection came from Viktor Orbán, as expected. His Fidesz government in Hungary—like the Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland—has come in for sharp criticism from Timmermans for rule of law violations. As Vice President of the European Commission over the past five years, Timmermans has been in charge of infraction procedures against both countries. This has made him the object of vilification there.

Between them, Poland and Hungary could not have stopped the multilingual Dutch Social Democrat from becoming president, since the vote requires a qualified majority rather than unanimity. Even if they had been joined in their objections by their “Visegrád Four” allies Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and even with Italy voting against as well (Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has sharply criticized Timmermans), it would not have been enough to defeat him.

What ended up sinking Merkel’s “Osaka plan” was not the far-right in Hungary, Poland and Italy. It was instead the more centrist leaders of Ireland, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Latvia. They balked, saying such an arrangement made it seem as if the EPP had come third in the election, when they had in fact won. They would not countenance letting the commission presidency slip from the EPP’s grip.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was, surprisingly, the most vocal in his objections. “The vast majority of the EPP prime ministers don’t believe that we should give up the presidency of the commission quite so easily, without a fight,” he said upon entering the summit on Sunday night, following the contentious EPP pre-meeting. He went on to suggest sympathy for the positions of Hungary and Poland, saying that choosing Timmermans could exacerbate “divisions between East and West.”

“Everything Went Wrong”

The 28 leaders then dived into 15 straight hours of negotiations, before it became clear that the Osaka plan wasn’t going to work. At noon on Monday, Council President Donald Tusk abruptly adjourned the discussions, saying the leaders would reconvene at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, July 2.

The recalcitrance of Varadkar and the other EPP centrists rankled several of their fellow council members, notably Macron and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa. “Everything went wrong and obviously the result is very frustrating,” Costa fumed as he left the summit. He praised Merkel for working to find a compromise, and claimed her idea could have had majority support.

“Unfortunately, she did not find the necessary support in her own political family,” he said. In what seemed to be a reference to Irish Taoiseach, he said some leaders had been “captured by those who want to divide Europe, from the Visegrád group or from positions such as Mr. Salvini’s.”

Macron said that the summit had been a “failure” and that the behavior of some leaders was a humiliation for the European Council.

In what may have been another reference to Varadkar and his rumored ambitions to himself become council president, Macron said “hidden agendas” had prevented an agreement, and accused unnamed leaders of theatrics and letting tempers flare.

“Many individuals didn’t facilitate agreements because they have personal ambitions,” he told reporters. “What is missing around the table is the sentiment and the duty to defend the European public interest. We must all defend our countries but also rise to defend the European public interest. When there are too many hidden agendas, we don’t succeed.”

Movement by Tuesday?

However he added that there may be possibility for movement before 11 a.m. on Tuesday. “The next hours will allow movements that weren’t possible around the table because until the last moment, some thought an agreement was possible,” he said.

At this point it is anyone’s guess who might be appointed commission president tomorrow, or if any appointments will be made at all. But time is running out. The new European Parliament will hold its opening session in Strasbourg on Tuesday morning, just before the third day of the top jobs summit begins in Brussels.

On Wednesday morning the Parliament must elect its new president, and MEPs have warned that if the national leaders haven’t chosen the package of top jobs yet by that point, they will go ahead and choose their own president, taking the position out of the negotiating mix.

This would only further complicate matters, which is why Tusk, Merkel, and Macron are all determined to get an agreement by the end of the day on Tuesday.

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© REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

(1) The Key Decision

During the first months of its term, the new European Parliament will need to confirm the new president of the European Commission. According to the treaties, it is the heads of state and government who nominate the commission president—the most powerful position in the EU—and the parliament only gets to confirm or reject her or him. But in 2014, the European Parliament instituted the Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) system and elected Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission.

2019 will show whether that system is here to stay, but a bit of background is needed to understand how it works (or why it might fail): the various national parties represented in the European Parliament organize themselves into political groups. They whip MEPs in votes just like in national parliaments. Each of these groups has fielded a Spitzenkandidat, and parliamentarians have vowed to make that choice stick: In theory, only a Spitzenkandidat who can command a majority in the parliament is supposed to become the next president.

If you listen to the EPP, the next president will almost certainly be their Spitzenkandidat, Manfred Weber of Germany, since they are projected to come first in the election. The EPP is also currently the largest group in the parliament, with almost a third of the seats. It is a broad tent that includes liberal parties like Finland’s NCP, centrist parties like the German CDU/CSU, and right-wing parties like Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz of Hungary, which is currently suspended as part of the civil war between the right and left flanks that is wracking the party.

Other groups in the Parliament, however, have soured on the Spitzenkandidat process and are unlikely to anoint Weber simply because the EPP comes first. He needs to command a majority, which the EPP will not have on its own. The center-left Socialists & Democrats, presently the second largest group with a quarter of seats, have fielded Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans from the Netherlands as Spitzenkandidat and may not be willing to support Weber.

The process is also meeting headwinds from national leaders, particularly from French President Emmanuel Macron, who says it is the right of the European Council to appoint the commission president. So the council may choose to disregard the Spitzenkandidat system altogether and appoint someone who was not a candidate, such as Frenchman Michel Barnier, who distinguished himself during the Brexit negotiations.

Margrethe Vestager, the high-profile competition commissioner from Denmark, could be a choice that satisfies both the parliament and the council, since she has somehow managed to run as a Spitzenkandidat for the third-largest group, the liberal family of ALDE, without endorsing the system.

(2) The Biggest Issues

In contrast to national parliaments, the European Parliament is not allowed to draw up legislative proposals of its own—that’s the privilege of the European Commission, which therefore tends to set the agenda. But European laws need to be approved by both the parliament and the council, which is made up of ministers from each national government.

The parliament tends to be more ambitious and strengthen commission proposals, while the council is more conservative, watering down proposals more often than not. National governments complain that the European Parliament adds unrealistic amendments to legislation because MEPs aren’t the ones who have to implement the laws—that will fall to the national governments represented in the council.

MEPs also have a say about spending. While the outgoing Commission makes a proposal for the EU’s upcoming seven-year budget, and the member-states must reach unanimity in the council, the Parliament must give its final consent. As usual, the current parliament has asked for higher spending than the Commission has proposed for the 2021-27 budget round, particularly in areas related to climate protection.

In the coming term, the new parliament may take up Macron’s ideas for reforming the eurozone’s financial rules. MEPs will need to take up recent proposals to establish a European Defense Union and a beefed-up defense capability that is more independent of the United States. With political pressure mounting over the migration issue, MEPs may also take up a proposal to change the EU’s border policies.

With EU-US trade talks having resumed in April, the parliament will likely also need to vote on whether to approve such a deal. The result is anything but certain, because MEPs passed a resolution last year saying the EU should not sign free trade deals with countries not party to the Paris Climate Agreement.

During the 2014-19 term, the parliament voted on almost 1,000 legislative proposals from the Juncker Commission. On a macro level, the big issues MEPs grappled with over were navigating a way out of the economic slump, handling the migration crisis, and reacting to Brexit.

But the more important achievements came in individual pieces of legislation. MEPs voted on a new set of privacy laws, and just before the end of the term they approved a controversial reform of the EU’s copyright rules—a law some have labeled the “meme ban.”  The parliament also held a hearing with Mark Zuckerberg to demand answers about what data Facebook is collecting on its users and how it handles political advertising.

One of the decisions that has had the biggest immediate impact on EU citizens was the 2015 vote to end mobile phone roaming charges within the EU in 2017. The parliament also voted to end card payment fees in the EU. Furthermore, it enacted a number of climate laws, including new CO2 reduction targets for 2030, car emission reduction requirements, and requirements for energy efficiency and renewables. It also cracked down on plastic carrier bags and other single-use plastics.

(3) The Dangerous Split

Polls predict a sizeable rise of far-right populist parties in the new parliament—parties who will certainly try to use their clout to hinder European legislation. To be effective, they need to organize in political groups, but given the many competing agendas, that may prove difficult.

In the old parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group were the largest group of the right-wing. It was formed by then British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2009, when he took his Conservative Party out of the EPP and instead got into an alliance with Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) and the Czech Civic Democrats (ODS).

It has been unclear what will happen to this group in the next term. If Brexit goes ahead before May 23, ECR would be dominated by the Poles, or it could take on like-minded allies like Fidesz and Italy’s Lega. However, the two party leaders, Orbán and Matteo Salvini, seem keen to form new groups that revolve around them. But even if the United Kingdom takes part in the election, it’s unclear whether the British Conservatives would want to disrupt the group formation process by continuing to be part of the ECR.

The other current groups on the far right are Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) and Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), which hold 5 percent of seats each. Former UKIP and now Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage heads the EFDD, and the group was long dominated by UKIP. This changed in 2014 when they admitted the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S), with both parties having a roughly equal number of MEPs.

However, UKIP and M5S have had a tumultuous relationship, and it is unlikely they would sit together again in the next term. UKIP has since almost collapsed and about half of its MEPs have quit the party, including Farage (though he has remained as leader of the EFDD).

(4) The Biggest Unknown

Speculating about UKIP and Farage brings us nicely to a short and particularly thorny question about the European elections: Will the United Kingdom take part? Prime Minister Theresa May certainly has an incentive to try and push through a deal before May 23—having to take part in the elections will deepen the splits within her Conservatives. What’s more, given her performance on Brexit over the past several months, the party is likely to take a beating in the elections.

For the time being, the specter of Brexit continues to loom over the parliament, and because of the latest extension it’s not even clear how many MEPs there will be after the election. The number and distribution of MEPs had been changed in anticipation of the UK departing, but now that will have to be shelved. And not to forget: MEPs will have to approve any final Brexit deal.

(5) The Great Hassle

With or without Britain, one thing is not going to change for the new European Parliament: MEPs will continue to split their time between the French city of Strasbourg and Brussels.

The treaties stipulate that the parliament’s seat is in Strasbourg, but in 1985 MEPs unilaterally built themselves a new home in Brussels in order to be with the other two EU institutions and not be shut out of decision-making. France took the parliament to court, and a compromise was reached, whereby MEPs must spend one week a month in Strasbourg.

Recently, CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, possibly the next German chancellor, dared to suggest dropping Strasbourg. Most national governments would probably be happy to agree—but certainly not France, champion of the city of Strasbourg and its flourishing hotel and restaurant trade. And as changing the seat of the parliament would need a change to the European treaties, unanimity is required.

In other words, the “traveling circus” will continue, and new MEPs had better get used to that quickly.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

From its very beginnings, the European Parliament has often been the target of scorn from commentators. They claimed it was a mere bauble of European integration with little power to challenge the member states of what was then the European Community. This reputation for institutional weakness fostered a tendency to treat elections to the European Parliament as a sideshow, where the strength of parties on a national level could be assessed in contests that were unlikely to cause them existential trouble. Yet through the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, the power of the European Parliament to shape legislation and affect the composition of the European Commission has expanded to a level far beyond the expectations of those first MEP candidates who stood in 1979.

In the process, gaining MEPs in European elections has become a central goal for any party or movement that wants to exert decisive influence over a European integration process that is reconfiguring Europe. Moments of turmoil such as the eurozone crisis, the Syrian refugee wave, the tensions between Ukraine and Russia or the end of old regimes in North Africa have underlined how the fate of member states is intertwined with the development of the EU and the states along its collective borders. Moreover, the Brexit crisis has starkly demonstrated the extent to which EU institutions can exert enormous pressure on states who attempt to challenge the structural foundations of European integration.

The ongoing nature of this process of institutional transformation has turned this year’s European elections, on May 23-26, 2019, into a crucial test for the political survival of newer as well as more established political groups, as part of the wider struggle to shape Europe’s future course. In the process, the long-term trajectory of key party families could be crucially affected by successes and failures on the European level. Right-wing populist parties, the Green movement, traditional Social Democrats, the alliance of center-right parties organized in the European People’s Party (EPP), and groups oriented toward liberalism as well as the far left could each experience a massive boost through these electoral battles or be plunged into a difficult position if its results point to further setbacks to come.

Far Right’s Change of Tactics

Of all these different political forces, right-wing populists have attracted the most attention. The recent entry of such parties into government in Austria and Italy in combination with the successes of the Leave campaign in the United Kingdom have fostered a misleading tendency to portray such movements as a new force within European politics. In reality, French parties under the leadership of the Le Pen family have been a force to be reckoned with since the 1980s, while Italy’s Lega and Austria’s FPÖ have gained power on the local and national level since the early 1990s. Even in Germany or Spain, where right-wing populist parties have only broken through at the national level since 2014, they have built on activist networks that have been operating on a regional level for several decades.

This history of right-wing populist parties in the EU means that there is also a track record that can be examined when it comes to assessing their ability to build a cohesive EU-wide party family. Such efforts have often foundered as the particular national interests of such movements hampered their ability to cooperate effectively on the European level. Yet the emergence of figures who have become Europe-wide household names, such as Lega leader (and Italian interior minister) Matteo Salvini, could well mark the beginnings of a decisive shift toward cooperation within the European Parliament and other institutions. Also, transnational far-right networks such as the Identitarian movement show an increasing interest in capturing EU institutions rather than bringing them down

European parties committed to defending an open society face many of the same strategic dilemmas as their right-wing populist rivals. Yet though they share an abhorrence of the populist right, the liberal parties grouped in ALDE as well as France’s La Republique En Marche, the German Green Party, Poland’s Wiosna or Romania’s USR, to name just a few examples, each draw on their own distinct set of ideological traditions. The way the Remain movement in the UK has splintered politically is typical of how attempts to push back against right-wing populism do not make other ideological dividing lines disappear.

Green Surge, Flailing Center-Left

Green surges in Germany and the Netherlands are likely to bolster the number of Green MEPs, who will want to carve out their own distinct ideological niche. By contrast, the way the votes of those who identify with social liberalism have fractured across different parties will make coordination more difficult for the ALDE party family. Far-left parties like Spain’s Podemos that enjoyed rapid growth in the wake of the Eurozone crisis face their own struggle to retain voters. They may be tempted by new populist options while still trying to maintain a coherent ideological identity to ensure that core supporters who abhor far right ideas remain loyal.

As elections in Europe increasingly become affected by mobilization for the populist right and counter-mobilization against it, parties that are not strongly identified with either position are struggling. Having presented itself as being neither left nor right, Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) has become ground down as the voter coalition it constructed has become difficult to sustain. Perhaps most severely affected have been traditional Social Democratic parties such as Germany’s SPD, who in trying to triangulate to appeal to voters on both sides of the divide in the battle over populism have ended up satisfying none. Others like Spain’s PSOE have been more successful. All in all, however, the center-left group, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, is likely to return to the European Parliament in a weakened condition.

Dramatic Structural Shifts

In an environment where established party networks are fragmenting while emerging ones are struggling to coalesce, the EPP can still maintain dominance despite losses and internal tensions of its own. Even if Hungary’s Fidesz breaks with the EPP, all it needs to do is to remain stronger than any rival in a fragmenting party landscape is to control ad hoc processes of coalition-building and shape the composition of the European Commission. One of Europe’s many paradoxes at this juncture is that, at a moment where the EU’s emergence as a central global actor has accelerated the fragmentation of European politics, the political network most likely to take advantage is made up of center-right parties that have dominated the politics of member states for decades.

The relentless emphasis on the rise of right-wing populism in much of the US and British news media in particular has diverted attention from how the EU’s growing geopolitical power and the European Parliament’s rapidly expanding influence within its system have led to more dramatic structural shifts in European society. These dramatic structural shifts have fostered the emergence of different players as new parties have risen to prominence during moments of crisis that link the individual fate of voters with that of the EU as a whole. Yet while some parties that have dominated the European Parliament since that first election of 1979 have come under enormous pressure, others have adapted to sustain a strong grip on Europe’s future. In a period when so much in European politics is in flux, perhaps being the least noisy player in the game can ultimately be the cleverest move of all.

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EuropeElects; Data as of April 24, 2019

From May 23 to 26, 2019, voters across the European Union will head to the polls to elect a new European Parliament. With party politics undergoing a revolution at the national level and uncertainty over the future of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU, the European elections come at a pivotal time. How will these elections change the EU’s political and institutional dynamics? It’s up to the EU’s 400 million voters (not counting Britain) to decide.

Will the Center Hold?

The elections will likely end the long era of big party dominance of the parliament’s business and of its committees. Mainstream center-right and center-left parties have traditionally retained a comfortable majority in the EU’s main institutions, including the European Parliament. Now, however, the populists are on course to make big electoral gains that could disrupt the Christian Democrat/Social Democrat tandem that have run the chamber for over 40 years.

Rising socio-economic inequalities and the divisive 2015 migration crisis have had a damaging effect on the public’s trust in political leadership. Consequently, disaffected voters are increasingly casting their votes in favor of anti-establishment candidates who promise radical change. If the recent national trends continue, both the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) are expected to lose many seats.

According to the latest data from Europe Elects (and assuming UK participation), the EPP will come in at 180 seats—a net loss of 41. It will, however, remain the parliament’s largest political group. The S&D is predicted to lose almost as heavily, with a drop of 30 to only 161 seats.
For the first time, the EPP and the S&D then may fail to jointly command a majority, which could empower other groups, especially the liberal ALDE, which is projected to become the third largest grouping. The Europe Elects model projects 104 seats for ALDE, should French President Emmanuel Macron’s projected 23 MEPs from La République En Marche join the group.

The question then arises as to whether the centrist parties will manage to agree on the most important topics. In the new parliament it will likely become more difficult to garner enough votes to pass legislation. While this may decrease the parliament’s legislative efficiency, the pro-EU political groups will still command a clear majority due to the Liberals and the Greens/EFA, who are set to win 51 seats. However, with the right-wing populists surging, all centrist parties will have to pull together to guarantee the regular functioning of the Parliament.

No Business as Usual

A number of reasons make us assume that the European Parliament will be less governable after the elections.

First, it is very difficult to predict the composition of the right-wing political groups after May. At a news conference on April 8, Italy’s Interior Minister and Lega leader, Matteo Salvini, announced his plan to form a new right-wing alliance called the European Alliance for People and Nations (EAPN), which would draw members from existing right-wing groups, among them the far-right Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) alliance. Traditionally divided, the populist right will aim to join forces to challenge the power of the governing bloc.

It is too early to say how much influence the new grouping could have, but a strong performance of right-wing populist parties could shake up the dynamics inside the European Parliament. Assuming that all ENF members—which is currently projected to win 62 seats—join the new group, EAPN may be in contention to beat out ALDE and become the third largest parliamentary group, at 85 seats. The right-wing populists would thus be far from commanding a majority, but the resulting polarization may cause uncertainty for policy-making and risks paralyzing the EU.

The creation of EAPN will also lead to the breakup of the right-wing populist Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group, which was already likely to collapse following the departure of the British MEPs, and the shrinking of the conservative ECR group (64 seats projected). This would leave large parties like Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) and Poland’s PiS in search of new allies, and potentially able to tip the balance of the new parliament. With 49 seats (projected), the left-wing GUE/NGL group will likely repeat its performance of 2014.

These numbers assume that the UK will not leave the EU before May 23. UK participation will prevent the planned reduction from 751 to 705 MEPs—and an eventual UK departure would weaken the social democrats, possibly bringing them down to their worst result in EU history.

Indeed, an average of polls compiled by Europe Elects shows that the UK Labour Party is likely to win a landslide should the UK participate, picking up around 30 seats. Labour would then represent the largest national delegation in the S&D group. This would help close the center-left’s gap with the EPP, which would not gain a single seat from British participation, since the UK has no EPP party.

This swing could even be enough to tip the balance of power in favor of a progressive alliance between the S&D, ALDE, the Greens and parts of the radical left (the GUE-NGL group is more likely to make small losses than gains in May), sending the EPP into opposition for the first time. The UK participating in the European elections would have a disruptive impact, on Brussels as well as Westminster.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Somewhat incongruously, a meeting of the European Union’s agriculture ministers on 15 April will probably see the finalization of the first major update to the bloc’s copyright laws since the turn of the millennium. The EU’s new Copyright Directive has been the subject of major battles through the legislative process; the war’s end will be agreed between discussions of farmers’ funding and climate change.

If, as expected, the European Council rubber-stamps the Directive, online content-sharing services operating in the EU will need to prepare for major changes to the way they operate. This is due to Article 17 of the Directive, which was until recently known as Article 13—the focus of many a digital rights campaigner’s ire.

Ensuring “Unavailability”

The 2000 E-Commerce Directive has long given content-sharing services safe harbor from liability over copyright infringements that take on their platforms, as long as they remove copyright-violating content that is flagged up to them. However, the new Copyright Directive declares that they are performing an act of communication to the public when they provide access to copyrighted works, so they need to get rightsholders’ authorization or face being liable for violations.

This means the platforms need to conclude licensing agreements with rightsholders. If they don’t have such agreements, they will be obligated to make their “best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightsholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information.” (This applies to larger, established platforms, as startups will initially face less stringent rules.)

What would these best efforts to ensure unavailability entail? Although the Directive claims that it “shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation,” the outcome will in many cases involve automated filters that scan everything people upload in an attempt to compare the uploads with known copyrighted works.

It was once the case that the draft law explicitly referred to “the use of effective content recognition technologies” as a way to keep copyright-violating uploads off platforms, but that led to the European Parliament’s rejection of the draft in July 2018. The language morphed into the vague “best efforts to ensure unavailability” terminology and Parliament’s rapporteur on the file, Axel Voss, insisted that filters were no longer foreseen.

However, the effect remained the same, as EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger, who proposed the legislation in 2016, has repeatedly admitted since the European Parliament finally green-lit the text on March 26. Indeed, the day after the vote, French culture minister Franck Riester also gave a speech announcing an immediate push for content recognition technologies in that country’s transposition of the Directive.

Fierce Opposition

Because of the effective filtering requirement, Article 13 of the draft was bitterly contested by the tech industry, digital rights campaigners, and the United Nations’ free speech rapporteur, David Kaye. “Article 13 of the proposed Directive appears destined to drive internet platforms toward monitoring and restriction of user-generated content even at the point of upload.  Such sweeping pressure for pre-publication filtering is neither a necessary nor proportionate response to copyright infringement online,” Kaye warned just ahead of the European Parliament vote. He pointed out that most platforms would not qualify for the exemptions that are designed to protect young startups, and the “legal pressure to install and maintain expensive content filtering infrastructure” would, in the long run, “imperil the future of information diversity and media pluralism in Europe, since only the biggest players will be able to afford these technologies.”

Internet grandees such as Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf, and Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales wrote a letter to EP President Antonia Tajani arguing that the legislation “takes an unprecedented step toward the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.”

But in the end, the European Parliament cleared the text by 348 votes to 274. This was largely thanks to more than two-thirds of the European People’s Party (EPP)—the biggest voting group—backing the text, with support from the majority of MEPs in the liberal ALDE group. The Socialist and Democrats (S&D) were split on the Directive, and the left-wing Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups were heavily against it.

In terms of country breakdown, by far the heaviest support for the Directive came from France—a mere two French MEPs voted against it. Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Latvia, Portugal, and Slovakia were also keen supporters. The heaviest opposition came from German, Estonian, Czech, Dutch, Polish, Luxembourg, Slovakian and Swedish MEPs. British lawmakers were quite evenly split on the issue.

Pressing the Wrong Button

Crucially, the European Parliament passed the Directive after accidentally voting not to consider alterations to the text, which would have potentially allowed the removal of both Article 17 and the also-controversial Article 15 (previously known as Article 11). Article 15 extends across the EU a new right for press publishers called ancillary copyright, basically the right to demand licensing fees when services such a Google News reproduce parts of their articles. It has previously failed to function as planned in Germany and Spain. Parliament rejected the possibility of changes by five votes—it turned out 10 MEPs had meant to allow changes but pressed the wrong button. No matter; while the final record of a a European Parliament vote can be changed for posterity, the result will not change.

Might the vote have some effect on MEPs’ chances for re-election in May? Given the fact that Article 13/17 sparked significant street protests and Wikipedia blackouts in countries such as Germany and Czechia, and over five million signed a petition against it, there may be fallout. Digital rights campaigners have already set up set up online services to help people see how their MEP voted.

And so the Directive goes to that mid-April agriculture council meeting. But is there any chance of it falling at the last minute? This would require a blocking minority of countries representing at least 35% of the EU, and it seems unlikely that such a coalition can be achieved. There could be opposition from some countries where the local EPP parties came out against Article 13/17, such as Sweden and Czechia, but unless Germany follows suit, a blocking minority is out of the question. German justice minister Katarina Barley has decried the use of upload filters. However, according to Germany’s Frankfurter Allgmeine Zeitung newspaper, Berlin and Paris did a deal whereby the former would support the Copyright Directive if the latter would support the construction of the German-backed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. And don’t forget that the version of the text approved by the European Parliament, with no alterations, was what came out of Council in the first place.

Assuming that Council gives its final approval to the text, EU member states will then have two years to transpose the Directive into national law. So expect the lobbying battles to continue at a national level, as tech firms and activists try to convince legislators to avoid a heavy-handed interpretation of those “best efforts.”

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© REUTERS/Yves Herman

Last week, on the margins of a European Council summit driven to distraction by Brexit, Europe’s Liberals dealt what could be the decisive blow to the young Spitzenkandidat system for choosing European Commission presidents.

As a result, the next two months of debate between the presidential candidates ahead of the EU election on 23-26 May could all be for nothing.

The system was used for the first time during the last European election in 2014, after years of debate about how to address the “democratic deficit” in selecting people for the EU’s top posts. The idea is that each European political family nominates a Spitzenkandidat (“lead candidate” in German) to become the European Commission president. The candidate of whichever party obtains the majority vote in the European Parliament election­­—or can command a majority in the European Parliament—becomes president.

The system was pushed by both the commission and parliament but was opposed by the council of 28 national leaders, who said the choice of commission president is theirs alone. The EU treaties simply state that the decision should be made “taking into account the result of the European Parliament election.”

While it’s clear that the council appoints the commission president, he or she must be approved by the parliament. And the parliament refused to approve anyone who wasn’t a Spitzenkandidat. So in the end, the national governments bowed to pressure and appointed Jean-Claude Juncker, the Spitzenkandidat of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) which had attracted the most votes in the election.

The system was enthusiastically embraced in 2014 by Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt. But this year he’s done an about-face. That’s because it is strongly opposed by French President Emmanuel Macron. The Liberals are trying to woo Macron into taking his En Marche party into their ALDE political family.

Macron has come out early and fiercely against the system, which he says is an EPP stitch-up because Europe’s largest political family is always guaranteed to get the most votes. He says the system is a way to guarantee the appointment of this year’s EPP nominee Manfred Weber, a man nobody is particularly enthusiastic about.

The “Seven Dwarves”

Until last week, the Liberals had refused to even participate by fielding a candidate. But in the end, they decided to hedge their bets. We’ll participate, they said, but we’ll do it our way.

Last Thursday, at the pre-summit of Europe’s eight Liberal prime ministers in Brussels, they unveiled a “Team Europe”—five women and two men—as their candidates for all the EU’s top jobs. That is, commission president, council president, parliament president, and High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

The other parties have reacted furiously, with many accusing the Liberals of cheating the system.

The European Parliament, digging in its heels in the face of Macron’s opposition, has said it will not nominate any commission president who was not one of the Spitzenkandidaten ahead of the election. This means that while the other groups have just one person as a possibility (or two in the case of the Greens and far-left GUE), ALDE will have seven. One could say their chances of getting a Liberal commission president just increased seven-fold.

“It’s a dirty trick,” one EPP member grumbled privately.

However, the effectiveness of this trick is diluted by the stature of the candidates, who have been mocked in Brussels as “the seven dwarves.” The only two people on the list with a high profile in Europe are EU Competition Commissioner Magrethe Vestager and Guy Verhofstadt.

The other five are the former European commissioner from Italy, Emma Bonino (much beloved in Italy but unknown outside), Nicola Beer of Germany’s Free Democrats, Spanish politician Luis Garicano from the upstart party Ciudadanos, EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc from Slovenia, and Hungarian politician Katalin Cseh from the small Momentum party.

Vestager’s Quiet Candidacy

Verhofstadt was seriously in the running to become EU Commission President in 2004, but he was vetoed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair who saw him as too federalist. Feelings about Verhofstadt among national leaders has only become more negative since then, with many seeing him as a showboating politician with impractical solutions.

Even if Verhofstadt were to attract a majority vote in the European Parliament to become commission president, it’s difficult to see national leaders accepting this. EU national governments have always been reluctant to appoint any commission president who they think would be adversarial toward them and try to dilute national power (many see the council’s appointment of Jacques Delors in 1985 as the biggest mistake made by the council in this institutional power struggle).

Vestager, however, is a different story. She has won plaudits for her tenure as competition commissioner over the past five years—not just for the boldness of her decisions but also for her clear and direct style of communication. Many, including The Economist magazine, think she is exactly the woman the EU needs at the helm in this difficult time. She does not call herself a federalist, but rather a realist.

Vestager has been careful not to be seen as campaigning for the job, and even during last week’s launch she was studiously understated. She only joined the ticket in order to “inspire people to take part” and to “engage in the debate,” she told reporters. When pressed about whether she wants to be commission president, she said: “First things first. We need to know what is the task … before we start handing out CVs and job applications.”

If she were to stick her neck out further, people might start sharpening the knives in Paris and Berlin. Her recent decision to block a proposed merger between Germany’s Siemens and France’s Alstom prompted a furious reaction from the two countries, and some have speculated the decision has doomed her chances of becoming president because either country would veto it.

On the other hand, her courage in taking the decision could increase her stock with the EU’s 26 (or 25, should Brexit happen) other countries, eager for a president who is not afraid to take on the Franco-German behemoth.

Vestager herself has in the past insisted that her biggest obstacle to becoming president is her native Denmark. The current government, projected to still be in power by the end of the year, is a political foe and unlikely to propose her as their commissioner for the next term. That being said, it is unlikely a small country like Denmark would turn down the opportunity to have a Dane as president, no matter her politics.

Spitzencan, or Spitzencan’t?

Were Vestager to become the next president, it would hardly be a victory for proponents of the Spitzenkandidat system. The Liberals have essentially disrupted it by fielding “Team Europe” and Vestager is merely hedging her bets by participating.

The fact that the system does not enjoy the support of Europe’s third-largest political family, led by one of the most pro-European federalist politicians in the form of Verhofstadt means its credibility has been severely damaged. The parliament may be insisting it will not appoint anyone who was not a candidate, but in Brussels people are openly talking about other names for the post, including chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. If someone interjects by saying, “But he’s not a Spitzenkandidat!,” they are greeted with laughter.

It could be that Weber or Frans Timmermans, the Socialists & Democrats’ candidate, become president and the system is vindicated. But this seem increasingly unlikely. Should anyone other than these two men become president, including any of the Liberal seven, the Spitzenkandidat system will probably be consigned to the dustbin of history.

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© REUTERS/ Eva Plevier

The European center-right took on a troublemaker in its own ranks on Wednesday when the European People’s Party (EPP) indefinitely suspended Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s populist Fidesz party. Fidesz will lose its voting rights within the EPP and its ability to put forward candidates for party positions.

In an effort to show that the EU’s largest political family can rein in its own extremes, Orbán’s party was put on notice—and expulsion after the European elections in May remains an option. But by not kicking out Orbán’s party, the EPP avoided, for now, giving a boost to the populist and anti-migration forces in Europe that are expected to do well at the ballot boxes. And Orbán has been able to spin to the ruling to show that he is still in control, calling the compromise a “good decision” and noting that the motion says Fidesz and the EPP “jointly” agreed on it.

In a heated three-hour debate among the around 260 national party delegates in Brussels on Wednesday, even Orbán’s closest allies within EPP supported a compromise decision to suspend Fidesz indefinitely. EPP members had gradually grown frustrated with Orbán, who has eroded democratic freedoms and the rule of law back home while criticizing EPP leaders for being weak and supporting migration. In his latest stunt, which propelled the EPP into action, Orbán oversaw a campaign against EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, a fellow EPP member and Orbán critic. In recent weeks, thirteen national parties have called for Fidesz to be expelled from the EPP.

The EPP and Fidesz agreed on an “evaluation committee” led by former EU council chief Herman Van Rompuy and including former Austrian prime minister Wolfgang Schuessel. They are tasked with determining whether Fidesz respects the rule of law and adheres to conditions set out by the EPP’s lead candidate in the European elections, Manfred Weber. The conditions include ending the anti-Juncker campaign and allowing the Central European University, a prestigious school founded by US billionaire George Soros and targeted by Orbán, to remain in Budapest. (Schuessel was himself rebuffed by the EU in 2000 for forming a government coalition with the far-right Freedom party, with a three-member team scrutinizing his decision.)

A Punishment or a Reprieve? 

But the EPP allowed Orbán to turn the suspension into a victory march. The wording of the document adopted by 190 members of the EPP’s political assembly lets Fidesz argue to his voters that, in fact, it decided to suspend itself. “We cannot be expelled, and we cannot be suspended,” Orbán told reporters after the meeting. Earlier in the day, Orbán had threatened to pull his party from EPP if it was suspended unilaterally, giving him leverage in negotiating his own punishment.

Back in Hungary, the network of pro-government media promoted Orbán’s interpretations of events as a victory. “No expulsion, no suspension,” was the headline of the news website Origo. “The pro-migration action has failed, they could not push Fidesz out,” was the title of another story. The public broadcaster has called EPP’s punishment a “huge victory”.

Orbán announced at his press conference that he is also setting up a three-member group with MEP Jozsef Szajer, EU State Minister Judit Vajda, and Katalin Novak, the state secretary for family issues, to report back after the elections on the issue of whether Fidesz should remain in the EPP. The team would be negotiating with the Van Rompuy group, Orbán said, although the EPP’s internal document on the decision mentions no need for negotiations. In Orbán’s world, it is Fidesz that decided to suspend its membership to assess whether EPP is true to its Christian democratic values. Orbán even told reporters: “We never had any campaign against Juncker,” giving an insight into the absurdity of the Hungarian government’s propaganda.

“Thirteen parties wanted to push the right wing of the party out,” Orbán said at the presser, arguing that it was thanks to his negotiations and willingness to compromise that party unity was preserved. “I hope we can lead a united campaign, and liberal ideas will not dominate the party, but it will be a balanced party family with Christian conservatives inside it,” he added.

Eyeing the Commission Presidency

Weber, who hails from the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party, was keen to put the “Orbán problem” behind him as his campaign picks up for the EU commission presidency. The EPP camp is now trying to shift the harsh spotlight onto its rivals, arguing that the Socialists need to rein in their Romanian member party, the ruling Social Democrats, who have curbed judicial independence in Bucharest, and that the Liberals need to scrutinize their Czech member which has been dogged by corruption.

How did Orbán escape expulsion? He had threatened last year that he could easily set up an anti-migration political alliance outside of the EPP with like-minded parties, and his EPP colleagues took notice. There was real concern in the EPP that expelling Fidesz now could not only send the wrong message about party unity in the middle of the European campaign, but could also give a boost to populist, anti-migration parties in the run up to the vote.

Orbán has openly hinted at setting up a new party with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), which is also shunned by the EU for putting the judiciary under political control. Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini, whose anti-migration League party is expected to be the second biggest national party in the next European Parliament, has also reached out to PiS and praised Orbán.

The compromise allows both Orbán and the EPP to await the final results of the European elections and rethink their strategy. Fidesz MEPs will continue to be allowed to sit with the EPP in the European Parliament for the few remaining sessions in this term. As the EPP is expected to lose dozens of MEPs in the next elections, Fidesz MEPs could provide useful support in the future for Weber’s quest to find a majority that supports his bid for the commission presidency. 

By sidelining Orbán, Weber also aims convince the other EU leaders—whose backing he needs for the commission top job—that he can rein in the populists. Indeed, Weber wanted to demonstrate to his potential allies that Orbán will not push the EPP to the right, and Hungary’s self-described “illiberal” leader cannot set the agenda for the entire party. “Fidesz will have no say any more on the EPP’s political approach,” Weber told reporters after the meeting.

However, critics—even within his own party—say Weber is not tough enough and the suspension only kicks the issue of dealing with Orbán further down the road. “Shameless move by Manfred Weber: a suspension just in time for the European elections, after nine years of attacks on rule of law by Orbán, and an evaluation in the fall, just before knowing if he needs Orbán’s votes to get the European Commission presidency,” former Green MEP Rui Tavares said in reaction to EPP’s rebuke. Tavares’s 2013 report in the European Parliament already warned about Orbán’s rolling back of democratic freedoms.

Despite Weber’s efforts, the questions persist: who is in charge of the EPP, and is the tail wagging the dog? 

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Parliament TV handout via © REUTERS

This is it, the Brexit endgame. At least, that’s how British Prime Minister Theresa May is portraying it to a nervous nation.

On Tuesday March 12, members of the British Parliament will take what May promises is the final vote on the Withdrawal Agreement she negotiated over two years with the European Union. The deal has already been rejected twice, first in a vote cancelled at the last minute in December, and then again in a vote in January that saw the largest rejection of a sitting government in modern British history.

The Withdrawal Agreement was defeated by strange bedfellows: a mixture of Remainer MPs opposed to Brexit entirely and Leaver MPs opposed to the agreement’s backstop arrangement for Northern Ireland. The deal stipulates that if the UK and EU can’t agree a free trade arrangement that would prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, the UK will automatically—and involuntarily—be put into a customs union with the EU until a solution can be found.

For the EU27, all that can be done is sit and wait to see what the week brings. Agreeing to May’s 11^th hour dash to Strasbourg on Monday evening and to what the prime minister said were “legally binding assurances” regarding the backstop was the utmost the EU could do to help. “There will be no further interpretation of the interpretation,” Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned.

Tuesday

But will the additional assurances be enough to get May’s deal over the line? Tuesday afternoon will see the UK parliament vote once again on it. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called upon the House of Commons to reject the exit agreement, and a rough survey of MPs’ positions shows it is still unlikely to pass—but never underestimate the power of last-minute panic.

If May’s deal does actually pass, Brussels and London will immediately start negotiations on a future free trade deal. The UK will officially leave the EU on March 29, but everything on the ground will remain the same at first.

That’s because May’s deal has provided for a two-year transition period during which EU rules continue to apply to the UK while the future relationship is hammered out. During this time the UK will be a rule-taker, having to follow EU laws and pay into the budget while having no vote in the EU’s institutions. British representatives will immediately leave the European Parliament, European Council, and European Commission.

Wednesday

However, if MPs reject May’s deal again, it will be indisputably dead. She has even conceded this herself. And that would mean that there would be no deal in place by the March 29 deadline, resulting in a disorderly Brexit which, under the most alarming projections by economists, could throw the entire world into economic chaos. At the very least, it will throw the UK into chaos in April.

To avoid this, May has agreed to a vote on Wednesday on whether or not to rule out no-deal Brexit as a possibility. May has said she is opposed to no-deal Brexit, but ruling it out would destroy the UK’s leverage at these pivotal last moments. The UK would no longer have a bomb to strap to its chest in the closing days before March 29—a bomb which would chiefly injure itself, but also its European neighbors.

It is unclear whether a vote to rule out no-deal can pass. There are many hardcore Brexiteer MPs who actually want a no-deal Brexit, saying that the economic chaos will be worth it for the sovereignty won, and that in any event the predictions are exaggerated. Dominic Raab, May’s former Brexit Secretary, has even called for May to whip her party to vote for a no-deal Brexit.

If the UK Parliament rejects the motion to rule out no-deal, then we are heading for a disorderly Brexit in two weeks’ time. Many expect that after such a result, the pound would enter a free fall on Thursday and global financial markets will wobble at best, panic at worst.

Thursday

If Parliament votes to rule out no-deal, then May will table a motion the following day to ask for a short extension of Article 50, moving the Brexit deadline from the end of March to the end of June.

The ball then moves to Brussels’ court. Under normal circumstances it might seem reasonable that the 27 other EU countries would agree to such a request in order to avoid catastrophe. However, the situation is complicated by the European Parliament elections taking place in May.

Right now, the UK is not planning to run a vote to elect MEPs for the next European Parliament term starting in July because it expected to be out of the EU by the time of this election. That’s fine if the UK really does leave by end June. But EU diplomats are skeptical. After all, what can be achieved in three months that couldn’t be achieved in two years?

The EU27 are going to want assurances from May that she sees some way to move the needle by then. Because if she were to ask for another extension, it would mean the UK is still in the EU when the new European Parliament takes its seats on July 2. If the UK hasn’t run elections in May and does not seat new MEPs, it would mean the new European Parliament is illegally constituted. Any laws it passes could be challenged in court. Obviously, the EU sees this as an unacceptable risk.

That’s why many EU leaders, including in Germany and France, as well as the EU Commission according to reports, believe that the EU should insist on a two-year extension and force the UK to run a European Parliament election in May. However other EU leaders, notably the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, are opposed to this idea. They believe this would continue the Brexit limbo indefinitely. Better to rip off the band aid now and get it over with.

On the UK side, May’s government has said it would be politically impossible to ask citizens to vote in a European Parliament election when they voted to leave the EU three years ago. It could prove very hard to get approval for a two-year extension in London.

However, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn now ostensibly supporting a second referendum on leaving the EU, such an outcome is more likely. A second referendum would take six months to organize. If there is still a possibility that the UK is staying in the EU, it is logical that it should take part in this year’s European election. Indeed, the outcome of that election in May would be a barometer for whether a second referendum is likely to result in a changed outcome.

If the week ends with a rejection of May’s deal, a rejection of no-deal, and an approval of a time extension, it will fall to May to convince her EU counterparts that she can find a solution within three months. She may travel to Brussels as soon as Friday to do so.

Given the political situation in the UK, it’s hard to see how she can be terribly convincing. In fact, if the votes unfold as many predict, she may be unable to survive as prime minister until the end of the week.

Sharpening the Knives

According to the Sunday Times, her rivals within the Conservative Party are already sharpening their knives. “Allies of the four main contenders to succeed her—Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, and Dominic Raab—said they were ‘ready to go’ and that ‘things could move quickly,’” the newspaper reported.

It may be that these Conservative rivals believe the threat of no-deal Brexit will scare Brussels into a last-minute accommodation in the days or hours before March 29, as often occurred during the Greek debt crisis.

But in this they are likely mistaken. In the rest of Europe there is an awareness that any no-deal chaos will not stop at British shores. But many, boiling with frustration over Britain’s behavior, have come to believe it is the only realistic outcome of this drama. Better to get the pain over with now then let it drag on for years and years.

In any event, some say, the timing just before the European Parliament elections could prove to be an effective weapon in blunting the appeal of anti-EU populists throughout Europe. If European voters see Brexit Britain embroiled in economic chaos, it could convince them that voting for parties that would take them down the same path is not a good idea.

Brussels has much less reason to blink than London in the closing hours of this drama.

NB. This article was updated on March 12 to include May’s late visit to Strasbourg the previous night.

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