Internal cracks loom as ECR makes new friends Dear readers, Welcome to EU Elections Decoded, your essential guide for staying up to date and receiving exclusive insights about the upcoming EU elections. I kickstart the newsletter with this first edition and will be alternating with our brilliant Eleonora Vasques every other week. In today’s edition - ECR’s new friends may lead to internal cracks and ‘cherry-picking’ alliances.
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The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) Group’s new far-right friends have started making some more moderate national delegations uncomfortable. Certifying a veer to the far-right, the group is set to bring on board France’s extremist far-right party Reconquête. At the same time, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, at odds with the rest of the bloc’s political forces, has said his Fidesz party intends to join the group after the EU elections, Italian media reported. In response, Czechia’s ODS, one of the group’s founding members, stated that “Fidesz does not belong [in] ECR Group, and it is completely out of the question for me and many of us in the group,” MEP Veronika Vrecionová said, adding that “Orbán has nothing in common with the values of the ECR Group.” Read more. Asked by our reporter Aneta Zachová about her plans should the group continue its far-right shift, Vrecionová did not deny the option of jumping ship and joining another group. “Everything will be dealt with after the elections.” ECR has come a long way since its beginnings in 2009 as a conservative, soft-Eurosceptic grouping, a brainchild of the UK’s Conservative Party and Czechia’s ODS, among others. Over the years, the group has veered towards the right – and increasingly the far-right – following the hardening stance of one of its founding members, Poland’s PiS, as well as the addition of new far-right forces to the roster, such as Spain’s Vox, the Finns Party, and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia. Meloni, who has transformed into a pro-European, constructive figure in the past year, will have to juggle with Fidesz’s constant attacks against the EU while stretching to maintain some sort of group cohesion among moderate sections and far-right sections – especially given a potential collaboration with the European People’s Party (EPP). Cherry-picking in post-electoral alliances With progressive forces increasingly shrinking, the far-right has started to gain in strength, and so will ECR if it confirms its expansion with Reconquête and Fidesz. With that, it could potentially become a kingmaker – or a serious veto power – in the next legislative term. “Let’s see how this dichotomy [between moderate and far-right ECR delegations] will be resolved in the next legislature because the future president of the Commission will need votes from the ECR to get elected,” an EPP spokesperson told Euractiv. The widening gap between ECR’s delegations may lead to a ‘cherry-picking’ scenario where the traditional pro-European forces collaborate with some delegations while vetoing others. “At present, with ECR we already apply, alongside Renew and S&D, a kind of double standard. If you are from Meloni [Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia] or the [Belgian] NVA, it’s no problem. But if you’re PiS, we give them nothing,” the EPP spokesperson added. Liberal Renew Europe group has already excluded cooperating with ECR as such, though. Renew’s freshly elected president Valérie Hayer lashed out against them, stressing that “by welcoming Reconquête, the only thing ECR group has conquered is its definitive ban from political negotiations, even before the arrival of Orbán”. Hayer is part of France’s Renaissance party, which is shrinking to the benefit of the country’s far-right parties. The EPP will most likely play on ambiguity and leave the decision for after the EU elections. “Making predictions about alliances now is absurd,” the EPP spokesperson said. “Unlike Renew or S&D, we do not give moral lessons to anyone,” the spokesperson said, leaving the door to ECR wide open. |