HELSINKI – With its nomination of 46-year-old German politician Manfred Weber for future president of the European Commission, the European People’s Party, or EPP, has officially launched the European Union election campaign. It hopes to remain the EU’s largest political group and lead Europe for the next four years.
On May 23-26, 2019, citizens of the 28 EU countries will elect a new European Parliament. Coming in the wake of the March presidential election in Ukraine, this EU vote have a major impact on Brussels’ relations with Kyiv. The future president of the European Commission, elected by the European Parliament, will play a key role as Ukraine bids for further integration into the EU.
During a two-day congress held on Nov. 7-8 in Helsinki, Finland, the EPP delegates chose between two candidates, Weber and the 50-year-old former prime minister of Finland, Alex Stubb. In the end, they opted for Weber, currently the leader of the EPP group in the European Parliament, by a wide margin: of the 621 votes cast by delegates, Weber received 492, while Stubb got only 127. Two votes were declared invalid.
Both candidates were presented as members of “the new generation, who will bring new life to Europe.”
“We want a new Europe,” EPP President Joseph Daul said during a press conference before the congress.
He admitted that, over the past several years, the EPP had faced electoral setbacks, with member parties failing to win national elections in their own countries.
“People in power always lose, because they have to take measures to make a change, and then many people want revenge,” Daul said.
Despite the losses, the European People’s Party currently holds 219 of the 751 seats in the European Parliament, making it the legislature’s largest political group. While there are predictions that this could drop to 180 seats after the election, even at that size it would remain the biggest and most influential bloc.
Currently, the EPP’s Jean-Claude Juncker, the 64-year-old former prime minister of Luxembourg, holds the presidency of the European Commission. Juncker was first elected to his post through the so-called “Spitzenkandidat process,” under which the party that wins the most seats in parliament has the right to claim the presidency.
The president of the EU Council, Poland’s Donald Tusk, is also a representative of the EPP, as is the president of the European Parliament, Italy’s Antonio Tajany. The only high position in the EU not held by the EPP is that of the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy: Italy’s Federica Mogherini of the Party of European Socialists holds this position.
Across the union, the EPP’s dominance is on the wane. The party currently has only eight heads of state and government: In 2014, it had 16 out of 28.
But after the presentations by Weber and Stubb, President Daul said that the party now has two great candidates — for President of the European Commission and for President of the EU Council, respectively.
If the two are elected, that will be good news for Kyiv: both favor maintaining strong EU support for Ukraine. During a press conference after his selection as candidate for European Commission president, Weber said that the EPP “is standing on the side of our Ukrainian friends.”
“No doubt about this – we see the aggressive behavior of Russia,” Weber told the Kyiv Post. “We, as the EPP, are strongly convinced that we have to give a proper answer, if there is no change in behavior from the Russian side.”
“Ukraine can count on us…” Weber added. “For us, the most important (thing) is to keep Europe together in a proper response to Russian aggression.”
Stubb told the Kyiv Post at the congress that he believes “it’s very important” to support Ukraine.
“The idea of having a European perspective for Ukraine is extremely important,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons why my (electoral) program is also available in Ukrainian.”
Stubb’s program – “The next generation of Europe” – is available on his website in ten languages: nine languages of the EU and Ukrainian.
Currently, two Ukrainian parties are members of the EPP family, which includes 80 parties from 42 countries. They are Batkivshchyna, the party of former prime minister and current presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR party. Batkivshchyna has 20 seats in the Ukrainian parliament.
While Klitschko attended the first day of the Congress, Tymoshenko did not show. Instead, she was represented by the deputy head of her party, Hryhoriy Nemyria. According to him, this decision was made because this event did not include speeches.
Other Ukrainian parties have the status of partners of the EPP and are still waiting for membership: President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc, which has 135 out of 422 seats in the Verkhovna Rada; former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front Party with 81 seats; and Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi’s Samopomich Party, which has 25 parliamentary seats. All three party leaders were in attendance, but, most of the time the Ukrainian delegation’s table was empty.
Poroshenko held several bilateral meeting during the congress, including with Juncker and Tusk. On the first day of the event, he also took part in a closed meeting of heads of state and government.
According to Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, President Poroshenko informed the EPP leaders about “progress he is making in economic reforms, in political reforms, in the anti-corruption area, and about all the efforts to implement the (EU) Association Agreement.”
“I think there was very wide support for Ukraine,” Plenkovic told the Kyiv Post. “I personally took part in the debate and commended all his efforts. (German) Chancellor (Angela) Merkel mentioned her visit to Ukraine in a positive manner.”
Participants in the EPP summit also discussed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose Fidesz Party is also part of the EPP. Orban has clashed with Brussels over his government’s clampdown on judicial independence, migrants’ rights, and civil society.
Recently, the European Parliament declared that Hungary is at risk of breaching the EU’s core values and initiated the Article 7 procedure against Budapest. Under this article, the union could suspend some of Hungary’s EU rights. There is no mechanism for expelling a member of the union.
Orban is mistrusted in Ukraine because of his friendliness to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hungary has also taken steps to block Ukraine’s closer integration with the EU and NATO, alleging that the country’s new education law, which promotes the usage of the Ukrainian language, discriminates against Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority. Ukraine denies that allegation.
For now, however, the EPP is protecting Orban, with the congress giving Hungary time to put its house in order.
“Every family has its enfant terrible,” Daul said, answering a question about the possibility of expelling Fidesz. “But as I’m a Christian Democrat, I prefer to keep my enfant terrible inside the family to be able to talk and reason with him.”
Shortly thereafter, Orban said that the future of his party was in the EPP.
The EPP “is the most successful party,” and his direction will be “Christian democracy,” but Hungary will aim to go “back to the roots,” Orban said in response to a question from the Kyiv Post.
However, Hungary’s behavior has clearly worried some in the EPP. At the congress, newly nominated European Commission presidential candidate Weber called for stricter rules governing EU members’ behavior to ensure that they do not violate the bloc’s core principles.
“A lot of countries have difficult development,” he said. “That’s why I would propose, when I become commission president, legislation to create a binding rule-of-law mechanism for the EU – including with (the use of) sanctions.”
