The cordon sanitaire with the pro-Russian far right that launched the new European Parliament a week ago has been extended this Tuesday to the constitution of parliamentary committees and subcommittees. The most extreme groups in the European Parliament, which voted overwhelmingly against a resolution supporting Ukraine a week ago, have been left without presidencies or vice-presidencies in these bodies. A broad alliance of parties ranging from The Left to the ultra-right, but pro-Ukraine aid party of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) has blocked the way, mainly, to the Patriots for Europe group, of which the Spanish far-right party Vox is a part.
According to the normal distribution method in the European Parliament, in which a majority system is applied that follows the d’Hont Law, the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group was allocated a pair of presidencies and several vice-presidencies. Not in vain are they the third largest group in a European Parliament that has two other far-right groups: ECR and Europe of Sovereign Nations. However, as the day has gone by it has become clear that the cordon sanitaire around these far-right groups was going to prevent them from accessing the positions. This decision has affected the Vox parliamentarian, Jorge Buxadé, whom his group proposed as fourth vice-president of the Environment Committee.
This result follows the rule that was already applied in the last legislative period to its predecessor group, Identity and Democracy (ID), which did not hold any positions of responsibility between 2019 and 2024. Nor did the most extreme party of all, Europe of Sovereign Nations, grouped around Alternative for Germany, a party expelled from the group of the French Marine Le Pen before the elections for her comments sympathetic to members of the Nazi SS.
The deployment of this selective cordon sanitaire to the extreme right is not homogeneous and this has been seen in the constitution of the Civil Liberties and Justice Committee. In the selection of the president, the Spanish PP member Javier Zarzalejos, who replaces the also Spanish socialist Juan Fernando López Aguilar, there was no need for a vote. There was no other candidate. The post of first vice-president had to be voted on, since that was one of the positions that was going to be assigned to PfE. Finally, the Estonian social democrat Marina Kaljurand was elected. The second vice-presidency, which was assigned to ECR, also had to be put to a vote because several MEPs from the Greens and the Left demanded that the vote be secret because they rejected the candidate presented, the Swede Chalie Weimers. The result, by a small margin, was as expected.
The anger of PfE was clearly visible just after the constitutive meeting of this commission. At that moment, the MEP of Vox Hermann Tertsch approached Zarzalejos to congratulate him and to reproach him for having voted for the candidate of La Izquierda, the Spanish Estrella Galán: “Congratulations Javier, but aren’t you ashamed of having voted with ETA?”, he said, referring to the fact that Galán shares a group in the European Parliament with the Bildu parliamentarian Pernando Barrena.
The application of this cordon sanitaire, which does not exclude the far right of ECR, represents a triumph of the theses of the European People’s Party, the force with the largest representation in the European Parliament, 188 parliamentarians out of 720. Already during the electoral campaign, the head of the conservative party’s list, the German Ursula von der Leyen, had hinted that she had no problem working with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, but yes with the French Marine Le Pen, leader of National Rally. The main difference between the two is that one maintains an unequivocal position of support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion while Le Pen does not.
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While last week ECR did not support Von der Leyen for re-election as Commission President – and she did so with the votes of her own party, the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens – this week the EPP has made room for the party in which Brothers of Italy is represented in the governing bodies of the European Parliament.
For Spain, the result of the day has yielded the same balance as it achieved last week with the vice-presidencies of the European Parliament, although with nuances. Three Spanish MEPs chair parliamentary committees: the PP’s Javier Zarzalejos (Civil Rights and Justice) and Carmen Crespo (Fisheries) and the Socialist Lina Gálvez (Women’s Rights and Gender Equality). The nuance is that in the previous five years they came from three different parties (PSOE, Juan Fernando López Aguilar; PP, Dolors Montserrat; and Adrián Vázquez, then from Ciudadanos).
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