BRUSSELS ― Ursula von der Leyen’s remaining four years at the helm of the European Commission look set to be shaped by last week’s dramatic decision to side with the far right in canceling a significant climate law.By opting to pull legislation designed to stop companies from “greenwashing,” the Commission president detonated a bomb under the informal coalition of centrist pro-EU groups that support her leadership and whose votes she will rely upon to make her biggest priorities a reality.
Measures such as rules on deportations for asylum seekers, an overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy, and a law simplifying green reporting requirements ― policies that will almost certainly cause deep ideological divisions ― will be in disarray if von der Leyen can’t keep the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the liberal Renew Europe on board. Even the ever-tortuous negotiations over the EU’s seven-year EU budget, which looms ominously on the horizon, could be affected, although politicians and officials play this down.
While von der Leyen is from the center-right European People’s Party, the group for decades had an informal coalition with the Socialists and, to some extent, with the liberals. The arrangement kept the EU functioning and pursuing a broadly middle-of-the-road, moderate agenda.
But Brussels politics is showing that it is not immune to the right-wing winds sweeping across the continent. As the EPP pushes its relationship with the two other mainstream groups further to the right, the EU’s core institutions are now beset by infighting, uncertainty and mistrust.
The “EPP are being irresponsible, using their position just to power play and it feels like they want to humiliate us,” said Socialist MEP Tiemo Wölken, who was his group’s representative leading the greenwashing legislation, the Green Claims directive. And it wasn’t that this topic was an outlier that the EPP needed to crush, he said. “It could have been any other file.”
As well as being angry at the cancelation of the proposed law itself, both centrist parties accuse the EPP and von der Leyen of circumventing the EU’s legislative norms. Although the Commission has insisted it has the prerogative to shield the bloc from what it sees as bad versions of laws it originally proposed, this one was already in the final stages of negotiation between the Parliament and the EU Council ― representing national governments ― with both institutions having already approved their positions after months of work.
Making life difficult
So now for the backlash.
In the months and years ahead, Socialist and liberal lawmakers could slow the process of scrutinizing, shaping and agreeing to proposed laws. They could “make the Commission’s life difficult” by refusing to play ball with the EPP on files that groups further to the right won’t support, said EU expert Richard Corbett, a former U.K. MEP and adviser to the European Council president.
Notably, Socialists and liberals could target von der Leyen’s plan to reduce red tape linked to climate targets, the No. 1 priority of her second term in office, he added.
“Von der Leyen has to make a choice,” said René Repasi, leader of the German Socialists, warning that if she continues to cater to the right-wing faction in the Parliament, the Socialists could trigger “tough” consequences for the ongoing negotiations over the green reporting rules simplification package ― the so-called omnibus.
“Von der Leyen and the EPP 1750747925 need to say that this action [the withdrawal of the anti-greenwashing bill] was an accident, and to remedy this within this week, otherwise the very foundation [of the coalition] is put into question,” he said.
The centrists are irked at how last week’s decision appears to deliver a victory to the right-wing in its determination to kill off part of the flagship Green Deal from the last term. This despite von der Leyen’s having used the Socialists and liberals to become Commission president in the first place.
It comes after months of growing resentment as the EPP repeatedly hooked up with right-wing and far-right forces ― such as the European Conservatives and Reformists and the Patriots for Europe, the group of France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Victor Orbán ― to press ahead with its policy priorities.
“If President von der Leyen wants to have a broader collaboration around the center [in order to advance her policy agenda], this is what she has to avoid,” said the Parliament’s liberal vice president, Martin Hojsík.
For its part, the EPP argues that the makeup of the Parliament has shifted away from the left and the center, a change that has given it the mandate to deliver center-right policies ― and, if need be, to rely on far-right votes.
Winds of change
It’s not just the political configuration of the Parliament that is causing difficulties for von der Leyen. The waning influence of the center left in national governments across Europe could also paradoxically strengthen the hand of the center left in Brussels ― because it would have less to lose ― thereby making life more difficult for the center-right-dominated Commission.The center left’s hold on power in Spain is increasingly fragile, while this year’s election in Germany saw it reduced from holding the chancellor’s post to junior coalition partner status.
At the EU level, the center-left group could feel less bound by the responsibilities of government and become a more active opposition. The same goes for the liberals, if French President Emmanuel Macron isn’t succeeded by a politician of the same party in elections two years hence.“There is definitely this risk,” Repasi said. “The Spanish delegation is the second largest one, they have the leader of the group, and if they do not feel bound by Council responsibilities, it will make it easier for them to move into a different direction.”
Storm in a teacup?
Yet despite the bickering, some politicians believe the informal coalition of the three centrist parties will stick together in a crunch ― because it’s in all their interests.
Precedent is also a factor. The Socialists and liberals have on several occasions ― even in the past few months ― failed to follow through on threats to distance themselves from von der Leyen’s more controversial moves. Such as when they both said they would refuse to vote in favor of Raffaelle Fitto, an Italian right-winger, for European commissioner ― only to do so.
And while the right-wing majority has been instrumental in allowing the EPP to advance some of its priorities, the far right’s fundamental opposition to EU integration makes it an unreliable partner when it comes to important files such as the bloc’s €1 trillion seven-year budget.
“The cooperation of all pro-European voices is unavoidable,” said EPP MEP Sigfried Mureșan, who leads the budget negotiations for the center right. “Otherwise, Europe will not have a budget for the next seven years, and that would be irresponsible.”
As for last week’s greenwashing decision, the Commission has now said it could backtrack on the bill’s withdrawal if the Parliament and the Council agree to exempt small firms from having to comply.
In the end, this latest crisis might get sorted. But the wounds it has opened are likely to fester.
Karl Mathiesen, Marianne Gros and Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.
The post Von der Leyen’s huge gamble puts her biggest policies at risk appeared first on Politico.
