Fragmented right inside the EP finds rigid cordon sanitaire

As the European Parliament elected Ursula von der Leyen for a second five-year term to lead the bloc’s executive, it was clear how the 720-member chamber had been divided along various national and ideological lines.

The new composition of the European Parliament has been marked by a rightward drift that has however also delivered a fragmented far-right, marked notably by the rise of Marine Le Pen in France, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia in Italy, and the German AfD. Neither party is within the same political family in the EP which now has three separate far-right groupings.

That has left the rest of the House to enforce the so-called red line separating the European consensus from the far-right: the cordon sanitaire, with the election of von der Leyen representing the first such expression of this political concord, with 401 votes hailing from the centre-right, centre-left and left-wing, liberal and green groups.

The changes in European parties’ electoral fortunes in the 2024 elections now delivers new waves of influence within the blocs making up the EP, which remains dominated firstly by the centre-right European Peoples’ Party (EPP) and the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D).

For example, the French are mainly represented within the far-right Patriots for Europe at the expense of Emanuel Macron’s losses for liberals Renew; Italians are leading the conservative right-wing at the ECR, but are a strong influence inside the left, chiefly the S&D but also The Left; Spanish MEPs are big within the EPP and the Socialists; Germans rule the EPP but also the Greens and have considerable presence in all socialist factions, but with the rise of the AfD, the far-right faction is also led by Germans; from the East, Polish MEPs retains outsize influence in the EPP and the ECR while Romanians remain well-represented in the EPP And the S&D.

The leaders’ blocs: EPP and S&D

EPP 188 seats

S&D 136 seats

With different national elections delivering varying fortunes for the mainstream parties that once dominated the EPP-S&D big tent parties, the 2024 elections have tweaked the influence of these parties.

Inside the EPP’s 188 seats, German MEPs remain dominant with 31, followed by Polish prime minister (and former EU Council president) Donald Tusk’s party, with 23 seats, and the Spanish Partido Popular with 22 seats.

Spain retains its influence with 20 MEPs from its ruling socialist party inside the S&D’s 136 MEPs; second to Italy’s Democratic Party with 21, while French socialists hold their own with 13 MEPs. German MEPs, despite dismal performances in the elections, retain 14 members in the S&D.

Interestingly, from the East it is Romanian MEPs who are found in both equal measure in the EPP (10) and S&D (11).

Far-right claws: Patriots for Europe

PfE 84 seats

On the far-right, Hungarian and French MEPs from Fidesz and National Rally respectively, dominate the newly-formed Patriots for Europe, which benefiting from Marine Le Pen’s triumph in the European Elections manages to establish itself as the third largest force in the EP.

By surpassing the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), the PfE re-brands the Identity and Democracy faction, which has been the most radical right-wing camp in Brussels with vehement opposition to the EU immigration pact and the New Green Deal and denies Giorgia Meloni of added influence in this constellation of far-right leaders.

Orbán, with 10 MEPs now severed irrevocably from the EPP he once belonged to, gets to keep his influence as the divisive authoritarian-leaning ‘bad boy’ of EU politics, especially in the context of his six-month turn to head the Council of the European Union.

By outraging his European counterparts by holding talks over Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow – three days after he went to Kiev to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – Orbán seals his Patriots with the timbre of his pro-Russian leanings.

And with Marine Le Pen and other leaders such as Geert Wilders and Matteo Salvini, the PfE represents the greatest challenge to the European mainstream and the leaders it dubs ‘elites’, such as French president Emanuel Macron.

The less radical: European Conservatives and Reformists

ECR 78 seats

Holding sway in the smaller ECR is Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Jarosław Kaczyński’s nationalist PiS (Law and Order), which might be more inclined to seek paths of agreement with the dominant EPP now that the far-right has broken up in three parts.

However, Meloni declared her group had not backed von der Leyen, who insisted upon being consistent and not voting with the left, even at the risk that Brussels may now be less indulgent towards Italy’s mammoth public debt.

Meloni is seeking sway inside the Commission, pushing European Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto for a top job, telling the Corriere della Sera it would be “surreal” for Italy to be ‘punished’ by Brussels with a non-influential executive post.

The ECR, once home to British Toryism inside the EP, are largely seen as less radical than other far-right groupings, suggesting there might be more common ground on issues like Ukraine with the EPP. The ECR has also benefited from three chairmanships of the EP committees. Already before the elections, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, an EPP leader, was criticised for leaving open the possibility of working with Meloni.

But it is clear that Ukraine is the demarcation setting the ECR apart from other far-right groups, with the Patriots advocating for a ceasefire and even allowing for concessions to Russia, setting them apart from the ECR.

Renew, Greens and The Left

Renew Europe 77 seats

Greens 53 seats

The Left 46 seats

Renew’s liberals, once the third-largest political group and often a deal-broker for the EPP in major legislative efforts, today have fallen to fifth in the European Parliament.

It remains driven by Emanuel Macron’s Renaissance, with 13 French MEPs, and Dutch and Belgian liberals (7 and 5 respectively) who have had classically an oversized influence in both the House and the group. Germany’s FDP elected 8 MEPs to the group.

Again German influence remains traditionally oversized inside the Greens, home of the original Bündnis 90/Die Grünen alliance from here the Green Party takes much of its influence, now in coalition government with the socialist SDP.

Green influence is squarely located within the West of the political sphere, with MEPs hailing from the Netherlands (6), France (5) but also Spain (4).

Reflecting recent electoral success in French legislative elections, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s France Insoumise leads the group with nine MEPs, but it is Italy that has delivered more MEPs after the Five Start Movement joined the Sinistra Italiana to add a total of 10 MEPs to the Left’s 46.

Fascists: Europe of Sovereign Nations

ESN 25 seats

The Alternative for Germany (AFD) dominates the third far-right alliance in the EP, the Europe of Sovereign Nations group with 25 MEPs.

Besides the AfD, the Sovereignists take MEPs from small parties from Bulgaria, France, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Czechia and Hungary. But it rejected the S.O.S. Romania party’s application to join, home of the eccentric far-rightist Diana Șoșoacă, who has been ejected from a recent sitting at the EP by president Roberta Metsola for interrupting the session.

Also present in the ESN is the now divided French anti-Islamic party Reconquête, led by Marine Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal and Eric Zemmour. But four of its five MEPs have joined the European Conservatives after their expulsion from the party.

As the Patriots, the ESN wants to improve relations with Russia.

Committee influence

The influential EP committees, where laws are drafted prior prior to being voted on in the plenary, are crucial to national parties to influence policy goals, as well as helping cement the influence of committee chairs as ‘chief MEPs’ who direct policy direction.

Of note once again is how the mainstream parties’ cordon sanitaire has kept out the far-right from any positions of responsibility.

Of the 20 committees, the centre-right EPP chairs seven (foreign affairs, civil liberties and justice and home affairs, transport, industry and research, fisheries, constitutional affairs, and budgetary control); the centre-left S&D has five chairs (international trade, economic and monetary affairs, environment and public health, regional development, and women’s rights and gender equality).

The right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, where Italy’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia and the Polish PiS hold sway, chair three commitees (budgets, agricultural and rural development, petiions); liberals Renew hold two chairs (development, and legal affairs) just as the Greens (internal market and consumer protection, and culture and education); while the remaining committee is chaired by a Left MEP (employment and social affairs).

With the exception of the ECR, there none of the 20 committees’ vice-chairs – there are four for each committee – hails from anywhere on the far-right of the Patriots (PfE) and Sovereignists (ESN).

Fragmented far-right

True to its often short-term goals, the European far-right has proved itself unable to coalesce amid its divided national interests.

Even despite polls pointing to a rightward drift, the inconsistent political interests among different right-wing forces are too deep to seal any pact for a legislative majority, which meant that any conservative victory at the European elections immediately lost momentum, and served to further cement the cordon sanitaire held by the EPP and the S&D, together with Renew, the Greens, and the Left.

The ECR, now led by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni with her Fratelli d’Italia, refused to house like-minded parties who had a pro-Russian line, leading to the creation of two new far-right groupings. But the new Patriots far-right group delivering a setback for the Italian PM’s efforts to present herself as Europe’s foremost radical-right leader.

France’s National Rally (RN) entered the former Identity group, renamed Patriots for Europe with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, and the populist Czech ANO party led by Andrej Babis. With 84 members, including eight  from Italy’s Northern League led by Matteo Salvini, the PfE leapfrogged Meloni’s ECR, who in domestic politics is actually allied with Salvini’s party. Additionally, the ECR failed to seal an alliance from Spain’’s far-right party Vox, which left the bloc to join Patriots.

Among other far-right groups, Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) did not joint the patriots, but created a group of 28 MEPs called the Sovereign Nations group (ESN), together with small parties from Bulgaria, France, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Czechia and Hungary.

With its anti-immigration views and scepticism over support for Ukraine, the ESN’s priorities differ little from the agenda of Le Pen’s National Rally. But the AfD was repudiated by the French party before June’s European Parliament elections over one AfD legislator’s failure to condemn Germany’s Nazi past strongly enough. Maximilian Krah, the MEP whose refusal to condemn all members of the Nazis’ murderous wartime SS paramilitary group led to the party being kicked out of the former far-right grouping Identity and Democracy, will not be a member in the new grouping.