The European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialist (S&D) group and the Renew Liberals have almost always voted the same way in the European Parliament on a range of EU legislation, according to a study by Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC).
The study looked at four areas of law: the Immigration and Asylum Pact, the Green Deal, Rule-of-Law resolutions regarding Hungary and Poland, and trade agreements. The analysis period covered the parliamentary legislature from 2019 to 2024.
“This shows two things: that the current [European] Commission coalition is tremendously solid and that the EPP prefers a pact with the left-wing parties than … the right-wing ones,” said Rodrigo Ballester, head of the Centre for European Studies at MCC and one of the text’s authors.
“This solidity contrasts with the cordon sanitaire used against European right-wing and Conservative parties.”
On the establishment of Eurodac, the EU database that stores the fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants and which was approved on 10 April this year, there was “only” a 79 per cent like-for-like rating.
The EU Blue Card Directive and the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (AMMR) votes resulted in 98 per cent and 96 per cent agreement among S&D and Renew.
On the Green Deal there was almost total agreement between the parties. That was despite the declarations of certain groups in EU Member States that were against some points of the deal’s 2030 Agenda, and in favour of the protection of European agriculture and livestock farming.
On the energy elements of the Green Deal, EPP, S&D, Renew, The Left and Greens voted the same way 97 per cent of the time. On industry elements, the figure was 93 per cent and transport 98 per cent, while the parties took the same position regarding circular economy resolutions 92 per cent of the time.
On the Nature Preservation and Restoration Law, on the other hand, only 25 EPP members voted in favour.
Regarding resolutions targeting Hungary and Poland there was also almost total agreement between the groups.
“On the 12 resolutions adopted during the legislature against Hungary and Poland, the EPP Group has shown massive and constant support, adopting 100 per cent of the texts with an average approval rate within the group of 83 per cent,” according to the MCC report.
On trade agreements, concurrence ranged from 97 per cent to 99 per cent.
The MCC queried whether its findings were “enough to qualify the EPP as a ‘centre-left’ party?”
