Dear readers,
Welcome to EU Elections Decoded, your essential guide for staying up to date and receiving exclusive insights about the upcoming EU elections. This is Max Griera, writing from Brussels. Subscribe here.
In today’s edition
- A guide to the 75+ undecided seats which could shift the balance of powers in the right and left sides of the hemicycle.
- Bits of the week: Next Commissioners tracker; group presidency votes calendar; the liberals’ defeating silence on VVD; must-watch debates.
Two weeks before the EU elections, there are around 75 seats up for grabs that will shape the new balance of power on the left and right of the hemicycle, available for the European Parliament’s political families to cement electoral gains – or mitigate losses.
National parties sit in the European Parliament alongside like-minded colleagues within parliamentary groups. And with the election comes a new chance for a reshuffle during every group’s recomposition, right after the vote in June or in July, before the first plenary session.
Some of these 75 seats belong to parties that have been sitting in the non-inscrits for the last few years and are now keen to join a political group, which would bring them benefits such as more cash and speaking time, as well more opportunities to lead negotiations on certain files.
Meanwhile, other parties are complete newcomers, as they were only formed in the last five years and now need to carefully pick which family to join.
While the traditional centrist majority of the centre-right EPP, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and the liberal Renew is set to remain, the 75+ wild cards will determine to what extent the other groups can impact the direction of the Parliament’s policymaking, and how many top jobs they can claim, such as committee chairmanships and vice-presidencies.
On the right side
On the extreme right side of the hemicycle, both far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) and hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) are expected to surge with 83 projected seats each, both battling against liberal Renew Europe, at 85, to be the Parliament’s third biggest political force.
But it is very unclear whether these groups will continue as they are.
This week’s announcement by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National that they will no longer sit with Germany’s AfD in the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group has fueled speculation about the future of RN’s projected 29 seats, which could perhaps join ECR or join other far-right forces in a new parliamentary group.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the leader of Poland’s Pis (ECR), and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz (currently sitting within the non-inscrits after leaving the centre-right EPP in 2021) have made it clear they want to work with Le Pen. PiS currently has 25 seats, while Fidesz is projected to get nine seats in the new Parliament.
Morawiecki has signalled he wants to welcome Fidesz within ECR but also “attract other parties” to make the group “significantly bigger.”
Another key far-right wild card is Romania’s AUR party, projected to win its first seven seats. While they would prefer to sit within a group unifying all far-right forces, they are talking to both ID and ECR, the party’s vice-president Adrian Axinia told Euractiv.
At the same time, the party’s president, George Simion, deeply admires Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and his personal preference would be to sit with the ECR.
All in all, it seems ID is bound to weaken in favour of ECR, which is now widely regarded as the future leading group on the right of the hemicycle, capable of surpassing the traditional cordon sanitaire against the far-right by cooperating with the EPP on a case-by-case basis.
On the left side
On the extreme left of the hemicycle, Greece’s Syriza and its projected four seats could leave The Left group, as the new leader Stephanos Kasselakis has expressed that “new Syriza” represents a “modern Left” which “comfortably” covers the entire space from the centre-left, the left, and the Greens.
Meanwhile, Germany’s unaffiliated left-conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which will enter the Parliament for the first time with six seats after splitting from Die Linke, recently announced that they have secured enough support for a new group.
It remains unclear whether the group will be formed. Wagenknecht first hinted at the Nordic Left and La France Insoumise as potential allies, but both have denied any involvement.
Sharing social-conservative views with BSW, potential members could be Slovakia’s Smer and Hlas, projected to score three seats each, who were suspended from the European Socialists in October 2023 over their pro-Russia views and allying with the far-right.
But one of the surprise winners from the reshuffling could be the Greens/EFA group.
After big losses in last month’s projections, which relegated them to a battle for sixth place with The Left, they could get a big boost with new Italian colleagues from the populist Five Star Movement (M5S).
Projected to score 14 seats, M5S is ready to join the group but negotiations are on standby due to disagreements over military support to Ukraine, which the party opposes.
After five years with the non-inscrits, M5S does not exclude “new opportunities” and will continue negotiations after the elections with “all progressive forces,” the M5S delegation leader Tiziana Beghin said in April. Several party lawmakers have in this mandate left the delegation to join the centre-right EPP, liberal Renew, and Greens.
Finally, four unexpected last-minute wild cards come from the Dutch liberal party VVD, which may be kicked out from Renew Europe in June, after joining a governing coalition pact with the far-right in the Netherlands.
