Von der Leyen opens the door to Europe’s hard
right
In POLITICO election debate, Commission president
gambles on an offer for Giorgia Meloni’s allies.
APRIL 30,
2024 12:30 AM CET
BY EDDY WAX
MAASTRICHT,
Netherlands — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave her
clearest signal yet that she is ready to cooperate with hard-right parties to
secure a second term in the EU’s most powerful job.
Speaking at
the Maastricht Debate, organized by POLITICO and Studio Europa Maastricht, she
indicated she would be open to a deal with the European Conservatives and
Reformists (ECR) group after this summer’s EU-wide election.
The ECR
group’s MEPs are often staunchly Euroskeptic, standing further to the right
than von der Leyen’s centrists, and its ranks in the European Parliament are
expected to swell after the vote in June.
A tie-up
between the ECR and von der Leyen’s European People’s Party could mean a
significant rightward shift for EU policymaking — on topics from migration to
climate legislation, women’s rights, and defense.
As an
election gamble, it is high risk: Such a deal could break apart the coalition
between von der Leyen’s group and the Socialists that has traditionally
governed the EU institutions from the center. She needs to keep that alliance
together to win her second term as head of the Commission.
While von
der Leyen ruled out a pact with the most extreme rightwing grouping, Identity
and Democracy — which includes France’s Marine Le Pen — she was more equivocal
when it came to working with the ECR, which is backed by Italian Prime Minister
Giorgia Meloni.
A
collaboration with the ECR “depends very much on how the composition of the
Parliament is, and who is in what group,” von der Leyen told the audience of
900 people gathered at the Vrijthof theater for the Monday night debate, with
more than 250,000 watching online.
Her offer
to Meloni and her allies marks a dramatic moment in the campaign to control the
EU’s powerful institutions, a contest that is set to be decided after the June
6-9 European Parliament election.
Far-right
parties have been kept out of power across much of Europe by an unspoken
agreement among more moderate rivals.
But in
recent years, politicians with more extreme rightwing views on issues such as
migration have enjoyed significant successes, winning national and regional
elections and topping opinion polls in France, Italy, the Netherlands and
Germany, among other countries.
For
centrists such as von der Leyen, the question has been how to respond. During
90 minutes of often fiery exchanges in the lead candidates’ election debate,
she sketched out an answer.
Socialists say No
Opening the
way to a deal with the ECR is a risky strategy. In order to secure a second
term as Commission president, von der Leyen will likely need the backing of the
Socialists and Democrats group, which polling suggests will come second in the
June election.
“Values and
rights cannot be divided according to some political arrangements,” said
Nicolas Schmit, the Socialists’ lead candidate. “Either you can deal with the
extreme right because you need them, or you say clearly there is no deal
possible because they do not respect the fundamental rights our Commission has
fought for.”
Speaking at the Maastricht Debate, organized by
POLITICO and Studio Europa Maastricht, von der Leyen indicated she would be
open to a deal with the European Conservatives and Reformists. |
It was a
rare moment of animation from Schmit, who gave a relatively quiet performance
during the debate and left it late to criticize his boss in the European
Commission.
“We will
not be able to vote for a program which has been negotiated with the ECR,”
Schmit told journalists after the debate.
With the
ECR group absent from the debate stage, having decided against fielding a lead
candidate, it had fallen to the Greens’ lead candidate, Bas Eickhout, to raise
the question about von der Leyen’s openness to dealmaking with rightwing
nationalists.
Eickhout, a
Dutch MEP, expressed his shock in response to her answers, exclaiming: “What!”
A loose
coalition of von der Leyen’s EPP, plus Socialists, liberals — sometimes joined
by the Greens — has steered the bloc in Parliament since 2019, passing
ambitious climate laws.
It won’t
harm the Greens’ campaign to make clear to their supporters that von der Leyen
— for all her record of evangelizing on climate policy — is someone who could
usher in a hard-right agenda.
The green
direction of EU policy — already being walked back by von der Leyen when it
comes to environmental rules for farmers and legislation to restrict pesticides
— would be even more vulnerable if a new right-leaning alliance takes shape.
Under the
EU’s system, the new European Commission nominated by EU leaders after the
election will require the support of a majority of the 720 MEPs elected to the
Parliament in order to take office. Last time, in 2019, von der Leyen only
scraped past the threshold by nine votes.
The
choice
In her
campaign pitch on Monday night, she told the audience, which included people
tuning in to the livestream online and via about 100 “watch parties” around the
world, she wanted to fight for a strong Europe for the sake of her children and
grandchildren.
Von der
Leyen portrayed herself as a unifying candidate and a safe pair of hands with
the experience to keep leading the Commission in troubled times, warning that
Europe faces dangers in the form of attacks from Vladimir Putin’s proxies who
seek to undermine EU democracy.
Eickhout
was the winner of a snap viewers’ poll taken among those watching. Speaking
after the debate, he predicted that von der Leyen’s offer to the ECR would
define the rest of the campaign. “What I heard was that she’s not excluding
[working with the ECR] … We Greens exclude them and I think this election will
then be about this choice,” he said.
“Within ECR
you have the same people that want to weaken Europe, that want to water down
our green policies,” he added.
Von der
Leyen has already set out the conditions for working with parts of the ECR,
saying the parties that join her putative coalition must be pro-NATO, pro-EU,
pro-Ukraine, and pro-rule-of-law.
Von der
Leyen made it clear she would not work with the far-right Identity and
Democracy group, in a debate marked by repeated clashes between the far-right
group’s representative Anders Vistisen and the other candidates, often on the
topic of foreign interference in the EU.
Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
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