The European Parliament’s second-largest bloc, the Socialist and Democrat (S&D) group, has cooked up a plan to ensure Brussels’ anti-democratic cordon sanitaire against the conservatives remains intact and that their traditional coalition partner—the centrist EPP group of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen—will remain loyal to the Left, even if that means increasingly betraying their voters.
The strategy is laid out in the five-page confidential document that was also leaked to europeansconservative.com. It was first discussed between senior S&D officials during their retreat in Belgium at the end of last month.
The plan involves ridiculing national conservative parties and talking points to make the idea of working together more uncomfortable for the EPP. It involves identifying issues that can be used to “drive a wedge” between them, insisting on deeper cooperation with the liberal Renew and the Greens, and to generally be “more assertive” when rebuking the EPP. Additionally, the plan includes “measures” to ensure their ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ about isolating the Right will hold.
“We should identify and leverage all those issues which can drive a wedge between the extreme right and the EPP,” the party’s internal strategy reads. It warns about being “overly aggressive,” but says the center-right EPP “must know there will be consequences to looking both ways.”
A good example of the strategy in action was last week’s plenary debate, initiated by the S&D. Under a bogus competitiveness pretext, the debate aimed to shame the EPP into disavowing the conservatives once more while reaffirming its loyalty to the Left.
The document also states that the Patriots and the ESN should be automatically excluded from decision-making whenever possible. It adds that socialist MEPs should refrain from interrupting their members to minimize their speaking time by not granting them the option to respond. It even calls on them to try to prevent right-wing MEPs from accessing spots on parliamentary trips abroad.
In a blatant disregard for democratic norms and the EU Parliament’s own internal rules, the paper also argues that keeping conservatives from their pre-allocated positions of power should continue. When the Ursula coalition (EPP, S&D, Renew, Greens) is not enough to carry a vote, they should also get the far-left involved.
Isolating Meloni’s ECR group is a bit “complicated”, the paper says, as it contains both “mainstream” and “anti-European” parties, so the socialists are urged to take a “case-by-case approach” toward them.
The fact that this comprehensive paper exists means that “they’re afraid of us,” Danish MEP Anders Vistisen (PfE) told europeanconservative.com.
“This is the first time that they’re afraid of losing the cordon sanitaire, because the EPP cannot abandon their core voters anymore,” Vistisen said. European voters expect them to be more right-wing and put an end to uncontrolled migration and pointless climate policies. “That is why the S&D is in a panic and tries to keep the cordon sanitaire,” he said. However, he added that the EPP is only beginning to look to the Right “for political reasons.”
But what is more important, according to Vistisen, is the “astonishing” lengths the leftist parties are willing to go to exclude conservatives from “everything”—not only from political discussions but also from essential oversight roles that any parliamentary opposition should have in a democracy. He likens this approach to a “steamroller” crushing the voices of tens of millions of right-wing voters:
They don’t want us to co-sign amendments, they don’t want us to participate in the leading bodies of Parliament regardless of the D’Hondt method [seat distribution], they’d even exclude us from going on committee trips to represent our voters.
The length that they are going to isolate us is far beyond that you see in any normal functioning parliament. It is worse than how AfD is treated in Germany or National Rally in France. It’s worse than anything that you would find in any society that defines itself as democratic.
The need to reinforce the firewall emerged partly as a response to one of their own member parties, the Flemish socialist Vooruit, entering a federal government coalition with the right-wing N-VA in Belgium. More importantly, it stemmed from the growing trend of center-right parties being forced to do the same across Europe (such as in Austria, until recently). Additionally, members of the EPP have begun to find common issues with the Right in Brussels and have voted with them at committee level.
“There is an extremely worrying trend emerging from the [EU Parliament’s] day-to-day business, where Coordinators are increasingly facing hostile right-wing majorities,” the document states, although this is far from the reality.
During the last term, the EPP voted together with the leftists in nine out of ten cases. If it feels like that’s changing, it’s only because some member parties (like the German CDU) feel compelled to begin at least nominally moving toward the Right in certain areas, such as climate or migration, just to prevent any more of their disillusioned voters switching to national conservatives.
To be clear, it would be great to see the EPP truly listen to its voters who increasingly reject the cordon sanitaire across Europe, but that is simply not the case. Whatever concessions they made recently are only to preserve their own power and not enough to solve anything; the EPP is still blocking any real change to the Green Deal or the Migration pact.
It is enough to listen to what the EPP has to say to understand where its true allegiance lies. During last week’s illustrious debate, MEP Daniel Caspary (CDU) ruled out any cooperation with the “far-right” and said the only reason the EPP began to change course on key issues was to “extinguish the fire behind the wall” and prevent the further rise of “extremists”—God forbid because their voters expect them actually to move that way.
