EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, is under fire for excluding the nationalist Identity and Democracy (ID) group’s representative, Anders Vistisen (Danish People’s Party) from the largest official TV debate ahead of June’s EU elections, Politico wrote.
The organizer claims that they cannot allow ID (predicted to be the next Parliament’s third largest group) to participate in the debate between lead candidates, because the party hasn’t officially nominated one Spitzenkandidat—despite the fact that almost no other party seems to take the purely ceremonial system seriously.
The final debate will take place on May 23rd, just two weeks before voting opens for some 400 million people across the EU to elect the next 720 members of the European Parliament.
The EBU, which also organizes Eurovision, invited all parliamentary groups to present their programs through their lead candidates—except the two national conservative parties, the European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) and ID—saying that since they haven’t nominated anyone for Commission president (as Spitzenkandidat), they can’t debate either.
Upon further inspection, however, the argument quickly falls apart. For one, the Spitzenkandidat system (which would have the largest party’s candidate become Commission president) is not the official way of choosing the EU’s top executive but simply a formality to put a single face next to each European party’s campaign. EU member states can choose virtually anyone as long as there’s consensus; that’s how the current president, Ursula von der Leyen, got the job despite Manfred Weber being the winning party’s lead candidate in 2019.
Secondly, von der Leyen is not even a real Spitzenkandidat now, as the tradition would require candidates to be nominated as MEPs first—which von der Leyen and her center-right European People’s Party (EPP) couldn’t care less about. Neither does the social democrat (S&D) group, apparently, as its lead candidate, Jobs Commissioner Nicolas Schmidt, is not running for the Parliament either.
Other parties are equally unserious about the process. The Greens nominated two MEPs, which would make no sense if the Spitzenkandidat system had any legitimacy, while the liberal Renew groups nominated three people—all of whom ruled out running for Commission president at the party’s campaign launch event.
Yet, it’s only the conservatives who are excluded from the debate. Or ID, rather, as ECR has not even planned to take part. Vistisen had been representing ID at the previous TV debate hosted by Politico, where he appeared to be the only real opposition figure in the room as all the others more or less agreed with the core of von der Leyen’s policies.
“Brussels has become a swamp,” Vistisen declared during his opening speech last time, denouncing the vision of a “federalized superstate” pushed by unelected bureaucrats, and promised that his party would begin by firing 10,000 of them if given power, starting with von der Leyen herself.
It’s clear that the EBU—whether acting upon political pressure or independently—is merely using the “Spitzenkandidat” excuse to censor national conservatives and right-wing populists, while the far-left is being invited just like the rest.
It’s not the first time conservatives are silenced or limited by a cordon sanitaire in Brussels. Right-wing lawmakers are regularly stepped over when drafting legislation, while incidents like last month’s attempted shutdown of NatCon Brussels show that authorities are not afraid of using more direct—and even less democratic—methods either.
It might also be that the EBU is trying to remedy its latest mistake, namely banning EU flags from the Eurovision finals, thereby seriously angering the Commission. The organizers only permitted national (and rainbow/pride) flags, not the EU’s yellow-stars-on-blue banner, which the Commission said was like a gift to the Eurosceptic Right—as if Eurovision was so important to them. By logic, excluding the same parties from the debate might be the EBU’s penance—but that’s just speculation.
Nonetheless, the debate will probably be rather bleak without ID, as the only ‘right-wing’ party on stage will be von der Leyen’s center-right EPP, which hardly acts conservative in Brussels. As a member of the “Ursula coalition” along with the liberals and the socialists, it voted with them nine out of ten times in the past five years. Let’s tune in on May 23rd to see Brussels’ ruling leftist elite talk about democracy for the millionth time, without even facing the opposition.
Censored: Conservative Candidate Excluded from Final EU Election Debate
Anders Vistisen, Danish People’s Party, Identity & Democracy
Photo: Mathieu CUGNOT © European Union 2024 – Source : EP
EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, is under fire for excluding the nationalist Identity and Democracy (ID) group’s representative, Anders Vistisen (Danish People’s Party) from the largest official TV debate ahead of June’s EU elections, Politico wrote.
The organizer claims that they cannot allow ID (predicted to be the next Parliament’s third largest group) to participate in the debate between lead candidates, because the party hasn’t officially nominated one Spitzenkandidat—despite the fact that almost no other party seems to take the purely ceremonial system seriously.
The final debate will take place on May 23rd, just two weeks before voting opens for some 400 million people across the EU to elect the next 720 members of the European Parliament.
The EBU, which also organizes Eurovision, invited all parliamentary groups to present their programs through their lead candidates—except the two national conservative parties, the European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) and ID—saying that since they haven’t nominated anyone for Commission president (as Spitzenkandidat), they can’t debate either.
Upon further inspection, however, the argument quickly falls apart. For one, the Spitzenkandidat system (which would have the largest party’s candidate become Commission president) is not the official way of choosing the EU’s top executive but simply a formality to put a single face next to each European party’s campaign. EU member states can choose virtually anyone as long as there’s consensus; that’s how the current president, Ursula von der Leyen, got the job despite Manfred Weber being the winning party’s lead candidate in 2019.
Secondly, von der Leyen is not even a real Spitzenkandidat now, as the tradition would require candidates to be nominated as MEPs first—which von der Leyen and her center-right European People’s Party (EPP) couldn’t care less about. Neither does the social democrat (S&D) group, apparently, as its lead candidate, Jobs Commissioner Nicolas Schmidt, is not running for the Parliament either.
Other parties are equally unserious about the process. The Greens nominated two MEPs, which would make no sense if the Spitzenkandidat system had any legitimacy, while the liberal Renew groups nominated three people—all of whom ruled out running for Commission president at the party’s campaign launch event.
Yet, it’s only the conservatives who are excluded from the debate. Or ID, rather, as ECR has not even planned to take part. Vistisen had been representing ID at the previous TV debate hosted by Politico, where he appeared to be the only real opposition figure in the room as all the others more or less agreed with the core of von der Leyen’s policies.
“Brussels has become a swamp,” Vistisen declared during his opening speech last time, denouncing the vision of a “federalized superstate” pushed by unelected bureaucrats, and promised that his party would begin by firing 10,000 of them if given power, starting with von der Leyen herself.
It’s clear that the EBU—whether acting upon political pressure or independently—is merely using the “Spitzenkandidat” excuse to censor national conservatives and right-wing populists, while the far-left is being invited just like the rest.
It’s not the first time conservatives are silenced or limited by a cordon sanitaire in Brussels. Right-wing lawmakers are regularly stepped over when drafting legislation, while incidents like last month’s attempted shutdown of NatCon Brussels show that authorities are not afraid of using more direct—and even less democratic—methods either.
It might also be that the EBU is trying to remedy its latest mistake, namely banning EU flags from the Eurovision finals, thereby seriously angering the Commission. The organizers only permitted national (and rainbow/pride) flags, not the EU’s yellow-stars-on-blue banner, which the Commission said was like a gift to the Eurosceptic Right—as if Eurovision was so important to them. By logic, excluding the same parties from the debate might be the EBU’s penance—but that’s just speculation.
Nonetheless, the debate will probably be rather bleak without ID, as the only ‘right-wing’ party on stage will be von der Leyen’s center-right EPP, which hardly acts conservative in Brussels. As a member of the “Ursula coalition” along with the liberals and the socialists, it voted with them nine out of ten times in the past five years. Let’s tune in on May 23rd to see Brussels’ ruling leftist elite talk about democracy for the millionth time, without even facing the opposition.
READ NEXT
The Virtue That Enables All Others: A Conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Merry Christmas from The European Conservative
A Defense of the Small Christmas Ritual