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fullscreen German Manfred Weber is group leader of the Christian Democratic Conservative EPP. Archive image. Photo: Vadim Ghirda/AP/TT
Ursula von der Leyen looks increasingly secure as continued president of the European Commission after the EU elections.
But the demands are many from both their own and other parties.
The election results are admittedly not yet clear – especially in Ireland where only 5 out of 14 members have so far been counted. Those who can gather now anyway in the premises of the EU Parliament in Brussels to discuss demands and wishes before the fight that has already begun about who will do what in the Commission and Parliament after the election.
Some are satisfied and certain of victory, such as the Christian-democratic conservative party group EPP, which hopes to appoint both von der Leyen as continued commission chairman and Roberta Metsola as re-elected chairman.
New demands
– We are the royal couple. Neither on the right nor on the left are there other options than working with the EPP, says group leader Manfred Weber to the Financial Times (FT) newspaper.
The fact that more and more people see von der Leyen’s job as in principle already secured causes Weber to already make other demands.
– I will not accept that the agricultural commissioner is taken from another party, he says to the FT.
The EPP counts on support from the social democratic S&D and liberal RE.
Green wants in
But even the Greens would like to take a seat in a majority coalition.
– We are ready to compromise. We are pragmatic politicians. We have the same goal: we want a stable pro-European majority, says group leader Terry Reintke at a press conference in parliament.
However, the far right also hopes for increased influence. Discussions are ongoing between several parties about how to strengthen their position. For example, the Austrian FPÖ is said to be pushing to let the German AFD once again have a place in the party group ID.
Three members from Croatia, Cyprus and Latvia have in turn joined the somewhat softer far-right group ECR, which includes the Swedish SD, which means that the group now considers itself to have 77 members – 8 more than before.
FACT The mandate in the EU elections
This is how the preliminary distribution of mandates looks like in the newly elected EU Parliament (compared to the current situation in brackets):
EPP (Christian Democratic Conservative): 189 (+13)
S&D (Social Democrats): 135 (-4)
RE (Liberals): 79 (-23)
ECR (EU Skeptical Conservatives): 73 (+4)
ID (anti-EU nationalist): 58 (+9)
The Greens/EFA (environmental and regional parties): 53 (-18)
GUE/NGL (left): 36 (-1)
Groupless: 45 (-17)
New and unclear: 52 (+52)
Final results are still only available from 15 out of 27 member states. Please note that the figures – mainly from the EU Parliament – differ slightly from what the groups themselves calculate.
Source: EU Parliament.
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