Welcome to Better Europe’s weekly update on EU Affairs.
PARLIAMENT POLITICAL GROUPS PRESENT THEIR WISH LISTS FOR VDL 2.0
Major Parliament groups including the centre-right EPP, the liberal Renew, the left S&D, and even the Greens are discussing their priorities in exchange for supporting the Commission President-designate Ursula von der Leyen, who needs a support of at least 361 MEPs to be re-elected. Despite extreme heat in the south and unusual heavy rain in western Europe, the fight against climate change is no longer as high a priority for the Parliamentary groups as it was in 2019. While S&D, Renew, and the Greens do not want to backtrack on the Green Deal, they all have changed their view on what its continuation should look like. The S&D wants to keep the climate targets but puts the social dimension at the core to ensure a just transition. According to leaked documents, the Greens are shifting to an “Industrial” Green Deal, calling for accelerated decarbonisation of the European industry. Their other priorities include defence and security, and the Rule of Law for Renew and S&D. With Europe’s renewed interest for security and defence, a Commissioner for Defence could become a reality.
PARLIAMENT PRE-ALLOCATES COMMITTEE LEADERSHIP POSTS
D’Hondt – if you have never heard of the great Belgian mathematician from the 19th century, don’t worry. He only comes back to haunt the European Parliament every five years, when the leadership posts of committees are informally “pre-allocated”. Informally, because the formal process is a vote in each individual committee during their constituent sittings, this time in the week of 22 July. However, to ensure everyone gets their fair share of the Chair and Vice-Chair cake, the political groups agree beforehand to support each other’s candidates, only to break that deal again once the voting starts, as a way to keep the extreme(-right) groups from holding power. So, on the provisional agreement circulated by bubble media this week, the two Chair posts allocated to the new “Patriots for Europe” group, are likely to fall to the EPP and Greens instead. The idea of D’Hondt’s method is to ensure a high level of proportionality while also ensuring some concentration of power with larger groups, which is important to complex multiparty parliaments such as the European Parliament and those of his native Belgium, as well explained in this updated EP Research Service briefing.
FRANCE FACES POLITICAL GRIDLOCK AFTER SNAP ELECTIONS YIELD NO CLEAR WINNER
France’s snap legislative elections, called by President Emmanuel Macron after his defeat in the European elections, wrapped up on 7 July without providing a clear winner. None of the three main political forces approached the absolute majority of 289 seats. The left-wing New Popular Front alliance came in first with 182 MPs, while Macron’s Ensemble got 168 and the far-right National Rally and its allies got 143. This hung Parliament leaves France in an unprecedented situation, as its institutional regime was built for a bipartite political landscape that would always provide for absolute majorities in Parliament. In this context, the appointment of a Prime Minister and its government are still very much up in the air, and no scenario can be excluded (a minority government, a coalition, or a technical government). For Europe however this is rather reassuring news, as the far-right and its open anti-EU agenda is firmly kept out of power. Indirectly, it also leaves more room for manoeuvre for Macron to re-appoint Thierry Breton as European Commissioner, who is now very likely to stay in power for a second term. Decisions on the appointment of Commissioners-designate are expected by the end of August.