Amid the frivolity, he’d be wise to watch his back.
A coalition is building within the EPP, Europe’s dominant political family, to field a challenger to Weber as president at the party’s next congress at the end of April.
Weber, who hails from Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, the sister party of Germany’s larger Christian Democrats, has been president of the EPP since 2022, when he ran unopposed.
He is the first person to head both the party and the parliamentary group at the same time – a decision a number of senior officials in the party told The Chattering Classes they now regret.
“The parliamentary group has swallowed the party,” one of these people said, adding that the EPP is supposed to represent the common interests of 82 parties across 43 countries. If Weber wins another three-year term, his critics worry he will tighten his grip.
The core problem, Weber’s detractors say, is that he sees himself as the public face of the EPP, a departure from the quiet behind-the-scenes role played by his predecessors. That becomes an issue when Weber stakes out positions that some members disagree with.
In the wake of last week’s tumultuous Munich Security Conference, for example, Weber called for a European president.
“We need someone who is going to represent European voices,” Weber told German public television, arguing that the French president and German chancellor only spoke for their national electorates.
He didn’t stop there: “We need to have the power to establish a European army and to finally put an end to unanimity when it comes to foreign policy.” (Under the EU’s current rules, important foreign policy decision require unanimous agreement among the bloc’s 27 members.)
Weber added that he believed “European troops could be sent to Ukraine” as peacekeepers.
Needless to say, a number of the the EPP’s centre-right members, especially those from smaller countries, were less than thrilled by Weber’s musings. Even those who agree with Weber in principle wondered why Weber was pushing for what a consensus within the party consider to be a pipe dream.
“These are nice fantasies, but they don’t respond to the immediate problem — how do we finance Ukraine,” one EPP source said. “Talking about a European army and sending forces? Sorry we live in the real world. It will never happen.”
Too many Germans? Another factor driving the push for an alternative to Weber is that if Friedrich Merz becomes Germany’s next chancellor, as widely expected, the EPP will be even more dominated by Germans. Though Merz wouldn’t have a formal EPP role, as leader of Europe’s largest country he would automatically have a big say in its affairs.
With Ursula von der Leyen running the Commission and Weber pulling the strings in the parliament, that’s too many Germans for some members’ liking (even if Weber and von der Leyen aren’t exactly best friends, and there’s little love lost between Merz and von der Leyen either).
The big question is who could challenge Weber for the party leadership role. Some members have been quietly lobbying for Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Whether he could take on the role alongside his job as premier is another question.
Weber, meanwhile, has been running a soft campaign for his re-election in European capitals in recent weeks, including in Berlin.
With a vote for the EPP presidency slated for the party congress on April 29 in Valencia, Weber would appear to have time on his side.
But if there’s one thing the Bavarian has learnt during his career in European politics, it’s that there’s no such thing as a sure thing.
