BRUSSELS — Jordan Bardella is jumping from one cordon sanitaire to another.
After seeing his far-right National Rally blocked from power in France, Bardella is now watching rivals in the European Parliament trying to stop his new Patriots of Europe faction from chairing two parliamentary committees.
When the groups in the Parliament met on Monday evening to decide who will chair the powerful committees, the Patriots chose to lead the transport and culture committees, as first reported by POLITICO. But when those committees meet for the first time on July 23 to formally choose their leadership, other groups are expected to put up candidates to block the Patriots.
“I expect the democratic forces in Parliament to ensure that the new Russian-friendly group is not allowed to participate in shaping the European Parliament,” said Katarina Barley, a German social democrat MEP. “The firewall to the far right must stand firm. No official positions, such as committee chairs, may go to members of this group,” she said in a statement to POLITICO.
The same thing happened five years ago when centrist groups imposed a cordon sanitaire on the Patriots’ predecessor, Identity & Democracy, thwarting that group’s plans to lead the agriculture and legal affairs committees. The firewall extended to vice-chair positions last time around.
Speaking before the deal was struck, Jean-Paul Garraud, a senior National Rally MEP, said: “We are here in a sort of temple of democracy and those who permanently lecture us set against us a rule which is totally anti-democratic … it’s totally unacceptable.”
“With the evolution of the political landscape it seems to me very difficult to impose this very undemocratic functioning on us today,” he said, adding that the Patriots represent millions of EU voters. The group may be new, but it’s the third-largest in the Parliament and has 84 MEPs from parties in 12 countries.
Scrap over civil liberties
Monday night’s deal raised the prospect of the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists — the home of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Law & Justice — chairing the civil liberties committee (LIBE), which handles sensitive topics such as the rule of law and migration.
That spooked MEPs on the left.
German liberal MEP Moritz Körner said: “Meloni’s and [PiS leader Jarosław] Kaczyński’s MEPs are not fit to protect fundamental rights and the rule of law, they are not the right people to chair the LIBE committee.”
On Tuesday, the biggest group in the Parliament — the conservative European People’s Party — struck an informal deal with the ECR under which they will swap control of two of the committees allocated to them in the broader package. Under the deal, the ECR would take control of the agriculture committee and the EPP would chair the civil liberties committee.
“There was quite a lot of dissatisfaction among colleagues about an ECR chair in the civil liberties committee,” said one EPP MEP, granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal discussions.
However, the EPP’s deal with the ECR enraged the liberal Renew group (now the Parliament’s fifth-largest grouping).
“Renew is outraged to see EPP preferring making dirty deals instead of sticking to our common lines,” a Renew official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
The official said the group could even withdraw its support for the EPP’s Ursula von der Leyen as the next Commission president, and for Roberta Metsola as European Parliament president, due to the deal.
Two people with knowledge of a meeting that Metsola held Tuesday with the Renew group said the liberal MEPs conditioned their support for her continuing as Parliament president on Renew’s getting the LIBE committee for themselves.
“We would expect that EPP just says NO to ECR instead of serving them,” the Renew official wrote in a message.
Who wants what?
Under the deal struck Monday, the EPP got the first pick of committees to chair, and plumped for the one that deals with industry, research and energy, which is set to play a mighty role in the next legislature as the European Commission changes the Green Deal into more of an industrial strategy.
It also asked for the foreign affairs committee, and for those covering fisheries, budgetary control, constitutional affairs, and health.
The Socialists and Democrats group’s first pick was the environment committee, which has been led by Renew since 2019. The S&D also picked committees on economic and monetary affairs, trade, regional development, and women’s rights and gender equality.
The ECR claimed the budget committee, which their Flemish MEP Johan Van Overtveldt currently leads, as well as the petitions committee.
The Greens want to keep the internal market committee that their German MEP Anna Cavazinni currently leads, and also want to take control of the subcommittee on human rights, currently led by S&D. Under the provisional deal, the Greens have no vice-chairs of the environment committee.
The Left will take the subcommittee on tax matters and the employment committee.
Louise Guillot contributed reporting.
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