MEPs from the European People’s Party sided with the European Parliament’s Left parties on July 16 in excluding the Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups from receiving any of the body’s 14 vice presidents.
The decision to apply a “cordon sanitaire” against the Patriots and Sovereignists groups was confirmed during voting on the vice presidents at the afternoon session in Strasbourg.
“What happened in Parliament is a disgrace,” a source from the Patriots for Europe group told Brussels Signal. “EPP members have once again deceived their voters.”
“The EPP continues to be the crutch that the Left and the extreme Left need to survive,” he added.
Roberta Metsola was re-elected in the morning as the European Parliament’s president from 2024 to 2027, when she will give way to a candidate from the Socialists & Democrats group.
Despite the Right parties’ exclusion from the European Parliament’s vice presidencies, the Left parties (including the liberal Renew group), performed poorly in 2024 elections compared with 2019.
Renew, which previously was the third largest group, is now in fifth place. The Left group is second to smallest with 46 MEPs, but still managed to gain a vice-presidency.
Patriots for Europe is third with 83 and received no vice presidents. Neither did Europe of Sovereign Nations, which with 25 MEPs is in last place.
The EPP voted for The Left group’s vice-president, while ignoring candidates proposed by the hard Right parties.
The vice presidents occupy important roles for day-to-day parliamentary management, with powers to control debates, debates’ timing, and political groups’ access to information.
“We do not want war with anyone,” explains another source in the Patriots group led by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
“We want to understand each other and work together, but for that, you must respect the numbers and the will of millions of voters who trusted us,” he added.
Speaking with Brussels Signal, Fidesz MEP Enikő Győri warned a week before that the European Parliament would apply a cordon sanitaire against the Right parties as a sign of “the political incapacity of the European Old Regime”.
#EuropeanParliament is no longer house of democracy: #PatriotsforEurope will have no Vice Presidents, meanwhile by the d’Hont system we should have got at least one. From EPP to The Left they do not respect the votes expressed by almost 20 millions of Europeans. Shame on them!
— Enikő Győri (@GyoriEniko) July 16, 2024
The European Parliament’s first vote on Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as president of the European Commission will take place July 18.
Although the vote is secret, von der Leyen hopes to receive support from members of her own group (the EPP), the Left and the right-wing ECR.
Von der Leyen’s support from the ECR comes mainly from Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party.
Sources in the ECR said there is “some discomfort” with the group’s official position of rapprochement with von der Leyen despite the ECR’s opposition over the last five years against many of her immigration and climate policies.
The cordon sanitaire applied to the Identity and Democracy group in the last European Parliament has now been extended to the Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations blocs. https://t.co/Mb3wmQAYmJ
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 12, 2024
