Despite its “pro-EU and progressive appearances”, the new Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen “will be a centre-right/centre-right Commission, perhaps the first ever. It will be culturally and politically more in tune with Giorgia Meloni’s ECR and Viktor Orban’s Patriots than with the Greens”. This is what Alberto Alemanno, professor of Community Law at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) in Paris, predicts in a comment sent by email. “Without the Greens’ votes – he observes – von der Leyen would not have had a majority in Parliament since around 50 MEPs abandoned Ursula’s majority, most likely Liberals and Socialists. These were replaced by the Greens’ vote (85%) who gave a ‘blank cheque’ to von der Leyen, despite her political priorities being closer to the EPP than anyone else in the centre-left”.
The Greens, Alemanno stresses, “are not part of von der Leyen’s majority (as she clearly stated) and in any case will have no possibility to hold von der Leyen accountable for her promises. This is not how the EU system works, and this is why any group that supports von der Leyen should have asked for the formalization of a coalition agreement.
Neither the Socialists, who are content with a housing commissioner and a few other vague promises, nor the Liberals, who have won slogan promises to protect the rule of law, will have the upper hand.”
Von der Leyen, he notes, “is now free to set up a centre-right, perhaps centre-right, Commission and pursue that political agenda without being politically or legally accountable to the Greens, nor to the Socialists and Liberals, but only to a hegemonic EPP. We might expect half of the new college of Commissioners to be EPP members (13), mostly responsible for key portfolios, despite their geographical origins, more
Ecr, which will give the ‘Vdl 2.0’ a permanent (center-right) majority within the constituency. Added to this are 5-6 Liberals, only 3 Socialists, and no Greens. Von der Leyen’s ‘great victory’ will go down in history as a Pyrrhic victory for the EU project, which is certainly not in good hands”, concludes Alemanno.
