EPP’s flirtation with far right in Parliament sparks EU budget fiasco

BRUSSELS — Political infighting over the use of Brussels funds to build border barriers and deportation centers in third countries has derailed a broader agreement on next year’s budget. 

EU lawmakers rejected a budget resolution in the Parliament on Wednesday by a vote of 360 to 233. The defeat won’t directly impact upcoming budget negotiations with national capitals, as it only concerned an explanation of the budget figures demanded by the Parliament. The figures themselves were approved in a separate vote. 

Still, it is feared that the party divisions exposed by the failed resolution send a signal of disunity ahead of what promise to be politically charged budget talks with national capitals that must be concluded by a Nov. 18 deadline. 

At issue between the European Parliament and national capitals is the size of the EU’s common cashpot for 2025. MEPs have endorsed a budget of €1 billion above the European Commission’s proposal, while national capitals want to shave off almost €10 billion from the EU’s programs. 

MEP Victor Negrescu, who will now negotiate the budget with the Council, told a press conference he was “happy” to be able to negotiate “freely” without having to abide by the terms of the failed resolution. 

Without a resolution, however, the Parliament is in a “weakened” position toward the Council because they will lack arguments to back up their figures, Rasmus Andresen, the lead Greens MEP on the budgets committee, told POLITICO.

More importantly, the fiasco exposed disunity among the more traditional and centrist parties that control the European Parliament, and which represent a bulwark against the legislature’s rightward shift during the June EU election.

The European People’s Party, the largest group in the legislature, had previously agreed on a compromise text with the left-wing Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberal Renew and the Greens. At the last minute, however, the EPP sided with the far-right Sovereignists (ESN) group — led by the far-right Alternative for Germany — and the populist-nationalist Patriots for Europe, as well as the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, to include an amendment demanding more funding for “external physical barriers at the Union border” as well as to “explore the idea of developing return hubs [deportation centers] outside the Union.”

The EPP’s typical partners were not impressed.

“My colleagues felt betrayed because the EPP did not respect the deal and they voted together with the Patriots [on] several amendments,” Negrescu said. “[That] is a problem because you see rapporteurs from EPP or shadow [rapporteurs] incapable of keeping the unity” of the group.

After the EPP pulled its move, S&D, Renew and the Greens decided to vote against the text as a whole, alongside the Patriots who, despite their success in getting the migration amendments passed, regarded the resolution itself as “unacceptable,” Hungarian MEP Tamás Deutsch said. 

“If you like relying on the far right, then maybe you will get an amendment passed, but you will not get the budget passed,” Andersen observed.

The EPP, for its part, later reprimanded the S&D for having siding with the Patriots to bring the resolution down, saying on their Spanish X account: “Opposites attract.”

But not everyone within the EPP agreed with its decision to side with the extremists: “This was the decision of the group. Personally, I thought it was a mistake,” the EPP’s lead MEP on the file, Andrzej Halicki, told POLITICO.

“We should not give space to the enemies of Europe and have a naive view that they act in good faith, especially since these issues were covered in the text of the resolution. They did not add anything new. I hope that in the future this will not be the case.”

Halicki, however, himself voted in favor of the far-right amendments.

This isn’t the first time political squabbles over migration have affected the EU’s annual budget. In April 2023 a similar situation took place during the approval of the 2024 budget.