There is increasing concern within the Right in the European Parliament on the resolve of the Christian Democrats (EPP) to follow through on their vote on stricter migrant return rules.
Sources told Brussels Signal today that there was nervousness over the EPP potentially reneging on earlier agreements in the committee with others on the Right due to new pressure, especially coming from Berlin.
The agreement was a compromise forwarded by the French centre-right EPP politician François Xavier Bellamy.
These fears, though, might prove premature.
An EPP spokesperson told Brussels Signal that the party had “No comment”.
Collaborators of the party said off the record that it was unclear what would happen and that agreements on how to vote in the plenary would only take place next week, although they had not heard indications that it would perform a U-turn.
Bellamy, the EPP MEP who framed the compromise, did not reply to questions from Brussels Signal but one EPP MEP did want to go on record.
Branko Grims from Slovenia told Brussels Signal, that the Bellamy proposal on return rules for migrants “is the best achievement in the European parliament so far”.
He said he was “very happy that it was approved in LIBE with a right wing majority”.
The LIBE Committee is the European Parliament’s standing Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, responsible for protecting fundamental rights, data protection, asylum, migration, and combating crime within the European. Union.
Grims continued: “That is what Europeans have voted for on the last elections. ‘The platform’ and ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ or ‘the firewall’ are for me absolutely unacceptable and are against basic democratic principles. In fact all those leftist ‘inventions’ deny peoples vote and are attack on democracy.”
He added that in the plenary session he will “most certainly vote for the Bellamy proposal as approved in LIBE, and oppose anything that would ‘soften’ or even destroy it”.
“I have not heard rumours that this proposal would be rejected by EPP. Some people may not be very happy with the Bellamy proposal but Europe desperately needs it – and Germany, too.
“People who would reject the Bellamy proposal are destroying Europe and are traitors to their own nations,” Grims said.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEP Alexander Sell said in a reaction: “European voters have elected the most conservative and patriotic Parliament in history. If EPP members still submit to the cordon sanitaire of the Left minority and obstruct the repatriation of illegal migrants, they are choosing political cowardice over democratic will — and they will pay the price at the ballot box.”
Over the weekend of March 15, tempers rose in Germany over the revelation that the agreement on the proposed changes to the EU’s policy on the return of illegal migrants was the product of closer collaboration with other right-wing parties than previously assumed.
There was a WhatsApp chat consisting of members from all right-wing groups, including the Patriots for Europe (PfE) and the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group (ESN), both considered “far-right” by many on the Left.
One AfD ESN politician, identified as Mary Khan, proposed amendments which were reportedly received positively by EPP members.
There was also a face-to-face meeting to further negotiate the later approved amendments.
This caused a backlash in the media and on the Left, in particular in Germany, where many saw in this collaboration a breach of the so-called firewall, the principle of not working with the AfD because it is considered far-right.
The centrist German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), under the leadership of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Markus Söder of the Christian Social Union (CSU), also joined the fray, distancing themselves from EPP chairman Manfred Weber, saying they “disapproved” and threatened “consequences”.
Merz demanded a clarification from Weber about the process, which he called “outrageous”.
“We are not working together with the right-wing radicals in the European Parliament,” Merz said, fuelling fears the CDU might torpedo the new agreement.
SDU members in Germany threatened to introduce consequences in the Bundestag, or parliament, possibly hurting Merz’s Chancellorship.
Martin Schirdewan, MEP of the left-wing Die Linke, demanded the resignation of Weber.
Weber himself told Bild he did not control focus groups of collaborators, indicating that the conversations with AfD and others were a product of EP intricacies and did not constitute a political breach.
