VALENCIA, Spain — The center-right European People’s Party reelected its chair Manfred Weber for a second three-year term.
The German lawmaker ran unopposed after he secured support from the party’s biggest delegations following an internal power struggle late last year.
The EPP is Brussels’ biggest political force. The party holds 14 European commissioners, 12 leaders in the European Council, and is the European Parliament’s largest political group with 188 lawmakers.
At the party’s annual congress in Valencia, Weber seized his moment to brag about the EPP’s achievements under his reign — and slam opposition forces across the political spectrum.
Before he took over, the party “was politically on the defensive,” he said, pointing to how it’s moved from opposition in 19 countries to having nearly a dozen heads of government.
“Without us … where would our industry and jobs be today, if we had not stopped the ideological climate policy à la Frans Timmermans?” he added, referring to former Socialist Commissioner who spearheaded the EU’s Green Deal.
“Social Democrats give up the working class,” he said. “Greens and Liberals are escaping only to the nice city quarters of well-educated, privileged voters. The populists are strong because too many democrats are weak.”
Policy machine
Weber was elected Wednesday with 502 votes in favor, and 61 against.
The naysayers are a sign of growing unease with Weber’s strategy of using the new Parliament’s right-wing majority to press through some of the EPP’s priorities, such as backtracking on green policies in the name of protecting Europe’s businesses.
The second-biggest delegation, the Poles, recently warned they will not continue to play ball if that means losing the socialists and liberals, the EPP’s centrist allies.
The party leadership has argued they will not sacrifice their policy objectives for the sake of appeasing the socialists — and if the far-right vote in favor of EPP’s proposals, so be it.
A similar argument was made in the presidency’s congress declaration, which insists the party should be pragmatic on who it works with to deliver “balanced” solutions and argues the EPP “is the bridge builder” among political families, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO.
Having led the party in the European Parliament since 2014, Weber in 2019 campaigned for the top job of European Commission president, though he was ultimately dismissed by heads of government in favor of Ursula von der Leyen, then Germany’s defense minister.
Instead of vying to snatch the Parliament’s presidency, currently held by Roberta Metsola, Weber opted for the post of party president. Since his election in May 2022, he has adopted a strategy of shaping EPP policy in tandem with heads of government to bolster the party’s agenda-setting heft.
Weber steered the drafting of the party’s Bucharest Manifesto ahead of June’s EU election, which has pressured the second von der Leyen Commission into toughening its stance on migration and backtracking on the EU executive chief’s own cherished Green Deal and other legislation passed last term with several deregulation packages.
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