EU: European Parliament, von der Leyen in the balance, Meloni votes key, helpful or deadly

The new European Parliament, which emerged from the 9 June elections, meets in Strasbourg from tomorrow until Friday. It must give, or not, its investiture to the President-designate of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen: it is a vote still in the balance, in which the MEPs of Fratelli d’Italia play a key role. Their votes may prove necessary, in order to guarantee UvdL a majority, but also lethal, because they may deprive it of the majority that supports it on paper.

The first task of the new Assembly will be the election of its president: with no rivals, the only candidate, the outgoing president Roberta Metsola, popular, Maltese, could be confirmed by acclamation, if at least one-fifth of the deputies do not ask for a secret ballot – she will remain in office for two and a half years, half the legislature, to be replaced from January 2027 -.

Following this, and on Wednesday, Parliament will elect 14 vice-presidents and five quaestors: the first signs of how the arrangements between the parliamentary groups work will be seen. On Wednesday, MEPs will also decide on the size of committees sub-committees and delegations – the nominal composition will be announced on Friday.

Also on Wednesday, the program of the opening session of the new legislature will include a debate on the outcome of the European Council of 27 June and the discussion and vote on a resolution on support for Ukraine, for which – according to a Eurobarometer survey – there continues to be a favorable public sentiment.

EU: European Parliament, the vote on UvdL and the geography of the groups
The crucial appointment of this first session is on Thursday, with the investiture of von der Leyen, the German People’s Party, who, if she obtains a majority of the assembly’s members – she needs 361 votes out of 720 – will remain at the helm of the European executive for the next five years. On paper, Uvdl, backed by the Populars, Socialists and Liberals, has around 400 votes, but the experience of 2019, when, in similar circumstances, she was elected with only a nine-vote margin, given to her by the Italian M5S MEPs who were not part of her majority, advises her to broaden her support base.

In recent days, von der Leyen has held meetings with the groups of her ‘pro-European’ majority and with the Greens: Socialists, Liberals, and Greens have made their support conditional on there being no ‘agreements’ with the European Conservatives, the right-wing group to which the Italians of Fratelli d’Italia, as well as the Poles of Law and Justice, belong. “Our support is not a blank cheque,” warned Socialist group leader Iratxe Garcia Perez. UvdL pledged not to have ‘structured cooperation’ with the conservatives.

Among the Italian MEPs, only those of the PD and Forza Italia are already determined to vote for it. The League and M5S, in the meantime merged into the group of the Left, have already announced their no, the Greens are holding their cards close to their chest; Fratelli d’Italia has a negative orientation for now, but is possibilistic.

After having closed ranks with the majority and the Greens, the president-designate will have a confrontation with the conservatives tomorrow, while she will not see the two extreme right groups.

EU: European Parliament, Orban’s role in a stronger but more fragmented right-wing
The new assembly has, in fact, the important novelty of three right-wing and extreme-right groups, compared to the previous two: the conservatives; the patriots, coagulated on the initiative of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and where the French MPs of Marine Le Pen and the Italian leghists have converged with a preponderant weight; and the sovereignists born on the initiative of the Germans of the AfD and which gather together minority and extremist splinters from various countries, fishing in undergrowth of anti-abortionists, pro-Russians, populists and ‘Nazi’ sympathizers. Moreover, there are over 50 MEPs from lists never before seen in the Strasbourg hemicycle: a heterogeneous troop, which does not help the integration project.

Of the three groups, the patriots are the largest, having combined more seats than the conservatives; the sovereignists are the smallest. Patriots and Conservatives are, respectively, the third and fourth largest forces in the European Assembly (84 and 78 seats respectively), behind the Populars and Socialists, having both overtaken the Liberals (76 seats).

The official names are European Conservatives and Reformists, Patriots for Europe, Europe of Sovereign Nations: many points of contact – opposition to the Green Deal, fight against migration, identity and religious claims -, but also many differences in terms of European integration, Atlanticism, attitude towards the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Patriots was born from an intuition of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who initially intended to coalesce around his Fidesz party from former Eastern European countries, to the extent that Politico titled it ‘the Habsburg empire strikes again’, but then ‘attracted’ the former Identity and Democracy group.

The operation has not, however, done away with the ‘cordon sanitaire’ that, in the past legislature, cut Identity and Democracy off from committee chairmanships and other significant roles in the European Parliament and that, now, will cut off the patriots and sovereignists, because – says a source in the Popular Party – “we do not want the European institutions to be represented by ‘friends of Putin'”, who “are against the European project”.

Assessments confirmed by the highly criticized initiative of Prime Minister Orban who, after Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the EU Council on 1 July, went, of his own free will, to Kiev, Moscow, and Beijing and to visit former US President Donald Trump: a peace mission for Ukraine not endorsed by its European partners.

The European Parliament made Orban pay for it by denying him the opportunity to present the programme of the Hungarian presidency with the evocative title, ‘Make Europe Great Again’: there is no room in July, it will be discussed again in September.