30-10-2024
By Professor Alberto Alemanno
Despite business-as-usual promises, the new European Commission – which is the most right-wing in history – is disabling the firewall against the far right.
Many observers breathed a sigh of relief at the results of last June’s European Parliament elections.
Instead of endorsing a far-right EU, the elections gave a mainstream pro-EU alliance of centre-right, centre-left, liberal parties — which have governed Europe over the course of the past decade — a majority.
These parties are expected to endorse von der Leyen’s new Commission with the declared goal of making the European economy greener, more competitive, and more secure.
But don’t count on such a benign outcome.
Start with the fact that the new Parliament is, in reality, the most right-wing in EU history.
More than half of its members are from the traditionally conservative European People’s party (EPP), of which von der Leyen is a member, and from far-right groups that include: the ECR, which brings together the party of the Italian prime minister, Georgia Meloni, with extreme right parties such as Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête in France, Spain’s Vox, and the Sweden Democrats; the Patriots for Europe (PoE), a group co-led by Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán; and the Europe of Sovereign Nations group, dominated by Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland.
A similar picture holds for the other two main EU institutions, the European Commission and European Council. More than half of their members are drawn from governments comprised of similarly right-wing political forces.
For the EU, this rightward shift in the balance of power is unprecedented and it seems likely to find echoes in — and potentially drive — the new EU political cycle.
And while von der Leyen has made public pledges to stick the centre, the incoming Commission might be tempted to look well to the right of the traditional conservative bloc in order to pursue its political objectives.
A combination of institutional, political, and cultural factors will be at play.
First, coalitions in the EU Parliament have historically been built less by political affinity and more by the need to get specific legislation passed. Indeed no Commission has ever relied on a pre-determined parliamentary majority during its five-year mandate. This means that votes from the far-right bloc will likely offer a way to get conservative policies over the line.
Second, the incoming von der Leyen Commission has not formalized a coalition agreement with the mainstream and with the more centrist political groups that officially support her administration. In the absence of such an agreement, none of these political forces will be able to hold the incoming EU Commission to agreed political priorities and to eschew far-right parties.
The third factor is the European Council, which is made up of heads of state and government. Currently fourteen members of Council hail from governments led or supported by right or even far-right forces. Pressure from founding member states with hard-right or right-leaning governments in Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands could force the Commission to depart from its stated political priorities.
The fact is that the Commission is neither politically committed nor accountable to its pro-EU mainstream allies. It’s door will almost certainly remain open to cooperation with the groups sitting to the right of von der Leyen’s centre-right EPP group. The combined strength of these three hard-right groups — ultraconservative ECR and the highly divisive Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups — adds up to 187 of the Parliament’s 720 seats. That makes these groups a potent – and almost irresistible – new ally for the EPP.
For a glimpse of what may come next, the past few months have been instructive.
Pressure from far-right parties and the farmers’ protests already helped push von der Leyen to walk away the policy she’d once deemed to be her legacy – the Green Deal. These pressures also shaped the positions of leaders in Germany and the call by French President Macron — for a regulatory pause.
Since then, a clear pattern to de-green EU policy has emerged.
There are growing calls to dial back a ban the combustion engines that requring all new cars to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035. Then there’s how fast the brakes already have been applied to the EU Deforestation Regulation and the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which is key to greening supply chains and making them more compliant with human rights.
Protections on wolves have gone by the wayside, as have rules to make the Common Agricultural Policy more environmentally friendly.
The undermining of the mainstream agenda is also finding its expression in the EU institutional settings.
Giorgia Meloni’s ultraconservative Brothers of Italy have secured a vice-presidency of the European Parliament, as well as several parliamentary committee chairs, and Brothers of italy member Raffaele Fitto is under consideration for the important job of overseeing billions of euros in regional aid as Executive Vice-President for Cohesion and Reforms at the European Commission.
To be sure Viktor Orbán’s Patriots of Europe and the more radical Sovereignists are supposedly excluded from joining forces with mainstream parties under the so-called cordon sanitaire — the unwritten agreement among centrist parties at the European Parliament to exclude fringe forces.
But the cordon sanitaire already is fraying. This month, in a preview of how the centre-right could seek majority support from the far right on votes, and well beyond climate-related issues, the EPP this month chose to vote with far-right groups to secure a resolution recognizing Edmundo Gonzalez as Venezuelan president.
In fact, the firewall against the far-right has already come down in Italy and the Netherlands where governments have combined forces with traditional conservatives with far-right and hard-right forces.
And it’s worth recalling that ahead of the European elections, there were extensive contacts between Italian hard-right lawmakers with von der Leyen, with Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament and EPP member, and with Manfred Weber, the leader of the EPP group.
Noteworthy too is the decision by the EPP in the run up to the European elections not to sign a joint declaration supported by the Socialists, Greens, Liberals, and the Left to keep the far right “at bay” at every level. If that rang an alarm among the Socialists, Liberals to the Greens — it should do so even more loudly now.
Von der Leyen’s new Commisison has not even taken office. But already the far-right punching well above its weight in Europe. And not just on green issues.
Another foretaste of the forces bearing down on the incoming von der Leyen Commission is in the troubled area of migration policy.
Under Meloni, Italy has pioneered the use of an offshore deportation center in Albania. It has already has sent 16 men, 10 Bangladeshis and six Egyptians, to have their asylum requests processed in Albania. Von der Leyen says such schemes could be expande despite widespread criticism of the scheme at home and abroad.
The EU calendar now turns to the hearings of the individual commissioners at the European Parliament. The Parliament has ways to force member states to send new candidates — it can even reject the entire slate of candidates.
In light of developments over recent months, an urgent question arises: which political majority will von der Leyen rely on and respond to over the coming five years? A hard right majority of formerly fringe actors, or mainstream political forces such as the Socialists, Liberals and Greens?
Members of the European Parliament should not miss the opportunity to ask her — and her appointees — for clarity.
Welcome to the new Europe