The EU Parliament's right-wing 'Venezuela coalition'

President von der Leyen's center-right EPP promised to shun the far right in a 'cordon sanitaire' with the center left and liberals. Did they break that cordon yesterday?

Ahead of June’s European Parliament election, as polls were starting to indicate that a combined far right could emerge as the largest group in the new term, all eyes were turning to the center-right European Peoples Party (EPP) of Ursula von der Leyen. Under the leadership of group chair Manfred Weber, the EPP was veering to the right during the election campaign - attacking von der Leyen’s Green Deal and embracing anti-immigration rhetoric. At the same time, von der Leyen was making overtures to Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy and president of the far-right (sometimes called ‘hard right’) European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party at European level. Both von der Leyen and Weber seemed to be hedging their bets in case Meloni’s ECR and Marine Le Pen’s further-far-right Identity & Democracy (ID) group together emerged as the largest force in parliament, making Meloni a kingmaker.

In the end, the polls were wrong. While the far right had major success in the EU’s two biggest countries, France and Germany, they underperformed elsewhere (most conspicuously in Hungary and the Netherlands where they are in power). There was no formulation where an EPP-ECR-ID alliance could have commanded a controlling majority, and so the option was removed from the table for the EPP whether they wanted it or not. The centrists (EPP, Scholz’s center-left S&D and Macron’s liberal Renew Europe) banded together once again to form the ‘Ursula majority’ to confirm the EU’s president for a second term.

The far right ended up splintering even further because of the conflict between Le Pen and Germany’s AfD, with the former forming Patriots for Europe (PfE) with Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Holland’s Geert Wilders, and the latter forming the German-dominated Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN). Meloni’s MEPs (as well as Meloni herself in the Council) ended up voting against von der Leyen for a second term. But the president had more than enough support thanks to the ‘Ursula coalition’ plus the Greens. The immediate speculation was that Meloni had made a grave error, handing the momentum to the left as the Greens could remind von der Leyen that she owes her second term to them (though it’s not clear that she does as she probably would have survived the vote without them, but it’s a secret ballot so nobody knows).

But since that vote, Meloni’s power seems to have only increased. Von der Leyen appeared to embrace the Italian prime minister’s new migrant offshoring scheme with Albania at last week’s summit. Von der Leyen awarded the ECR with a Commission vice-presidency despite pushback from the center left (though she cleverly gave Meloni only a pyrrhic victory by making him just one of six vice presidents, with a relatively unimportant portfolio). But the center left and liberal members of the ‘Ursula Coalition’ have been questioning why the president needs to suck up to Meloni at all, given that she and her MEPs voted against her.

The ‘Venezuelan Coalition’

All of this is the context for why yesterday’s awarding of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to the Venezuelan opposition was controversial. The award itself isn’t particularly controversial, the opposition already won it in 2017. Rather the controversy is about the coalition which was responsible for the outcome. The nomination of Venezuelan opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González came jointly from the EPP and ECR. Le Pen’s PfE rallied behind them after their nominee, Elon Musk, was rejected in a first round of voting. The AfD’s ESN also voted for them in the end. Together, the four right-wing groups defeated the centre-left’s joint nomination of Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun and the Greens’ nomination of an Azerbaijani climate activist. And so, this coalition between the center right and far right (or, if you want to be more generous to ECR, the center right, hard right and far right) has been given a name. Italian journalist Pietro Guastamacchia coined the term “Venezuela Coalition” on Twitter yesterday.

The reason that this coalition needs a name is that it seems to be a sign of things to come. In fact, it is a sign of things that are already happening. Though the prospect of a center-right-far-right coalition was rejected by EU voters in June, it seems to be happening anyway despite the Cordon Sanitaire the EPP agreed to. Perhaps this was only to be expected given that this is the trend for governing alliances at national level across the union at the moment, from the Netherlands to Italy to Finland. These groups have started to vote together as a right-wing bloc to reject elements of the Green Deal, most notably a one-year delay to incoming deforestation rules.

The EPP’s S&D partners are growing increasingly angry about it, culminating this week in their vote to reject the 2025 budget in protest of the EPP voting for amendments from the far right. “For now, the deals between the EPP and the far-right are on ‘minor’ points - agenda, individual amendments, etc,” said one former MEP assistant on X. “It's a trend but a short-term bet: the far-right is not a structural (or reliable) ally and this is burning bridges with the EPP’s traditional partners.”

“Back when I worked in the EPP, not so long ago, it was heretical to even think of voting far-right amendments, even if they were saying things the EPP agreed with. You never made deals with the devil, because the devil would always trick you in the end.” In the budget vote this week, the EPP ended up getting stabbed in the back because the far right voted against the budget in the final vote, despite the EPP’s support for their amendments.

Following the vote, S&D group leader Iratxe García Pérez told journalists: "We extend our hand to the EPP, to prevent it from playing a double game and forming double alliances. We must ask Manfred Weber what he wants to do. It is the EPP that breaks the cordon sanitaire. We know what it means to be with the far right."

Just how much the EPP group collaborates with the far right in the European Parliament, as some of their member parties are doing at national level, is going to be a big story in the coming term. One thing is clear: the far right cannot be ignored now. Together, the three far-right groups have 187 seats in the European Parliament - just one less than the EPP. By contrast, the far left has just 46 seats. Even if you count the liberals as neutral, the Parliament’s right-wing now has 375 seats - technically enough to form a majority. The left wing has 235 seats. Even if you add the (historically right-of-center) liberals to the left, that’s 312 - not anywhere near enough to form a majority (361). If the EPP wanted to, it could abandon the liberals and center left and form a majority with the far right to control the parliament. And this is something, I’ve heard, the EPP has been only too happy to remind its centrist partners behind the scenes.

That is why so many people see the cordon sanitaire as being so important - because without it, the doors could gradually open to a Dutch-style right-wing coalition at European level that puts the far right in control. And make no mistake, the result of the US election in 11 days will be pivotal in determining whether that happens or not. The EPP will be very much guided by what happens across the Atlantic. If they can see that the winds are blowing in the direction of far-right authoritarianism from the country which still militarily controls this continent, it will be tempting to go with the flow and unite with Trump’s allies in Europe.