The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) refused to sign an anti-political violence declaration drafted by the socialist group (S&D) after a new clause was added, asking signatories to vow never to collaborate with the allegedly extreme-right parties, meaning both the Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) groups.
The declaration was written in response to an attack on German socialist MEP Matthias Ecke by four teenagers with alleged political motivations. The incident has been immediately hijacked by both the German and European Left to condemn the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as well as, by proxy, every national conservative party in Europe—even though statistics show that AfD politicians are much more likely to suffer physical assault than members of any other party in Germany.
The original declaration was more of a blanket condemnation of right-wing extremism and political violence, which the EPP enthusiastically supported, along with all leftist parties in Brussels, including the liberal Renew, the socialist S&D, the Greens, and the far-left The Left.
However, the final draft written by S&D President Iratxe García included a new clause, clearly meant to corner the EPP to maintain the Parliament’s current, leftist-dominated status quo:
For our political families, there is no ambiguity: We will never cooperate nor form a coalition with the far-right and radical parties at any level.
The socialists’ goal with the move couldn’t be clearer: eliminate the chance of any kind of right-wing coalition forming after the EU elections by forcing the EPP to denounce conservatives once and for all in writing, thus maintaining the present ‘Ursula coalition,’ made of EPP, S&D, and Renew.
EPP, on the other hand, has several reasons not to give in to its allies’ blackmail. For one, joining such an impactful initiative drafted by the S&D would not translate well in the German domestic context where the CDU and the SPD are major rivals for votes in the center.
Secondly, for the EPP to keep most of its current power and influence in Brussels, it must keep all of its options on the table, and the same is true for EPP’s lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen.
In 2019, the Ursula coalition barely had enough votes in the Parliament to confirm her as the Commission President. With everyone on the Left expected to lose seats after June, von der Leyen might even need the support of a few parties from the ECR to secure a second term, and she knows it. Both she and EPP chief Manfred Weber began cautiously courting some ECR members (like Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia) recently, dangling in front of them the promise of a seat at the big boys’ table if they abandon their more sovereigntist friends.
This new political necessity is what EPP refuses to give up. Once again, Weber repeated what von der Leyen said in the recent Spitzenkandidat-debate, saying that the EPP’s position about coalition partners remains the same: open for cooperation with conservatives, as long as they are “pro-European, pro-Ukrainian, and pro-rule of law.”
However, it’s also clear that this kind of desperate balancing act gets harder and harder to perform as we draw closer to the election. Between the established parties’ pan-European campaign to discredit the entire Right, and EPP’s political strategizing to keep its leading position, the center-right might fall between two seats as it risks being alienated by both the Left and the Right.
