Macron’s liberals pile pressure on von der Leyen

BRUSSELS — Macron to von der Leyen: Remember who put you in Brussels. 

The European Commission president owes her job in part to French President Emmanuel Macron after she was slotted into the role with his blessing in 2019. But as she looks for alliances to shore up her reelection, her coziness with parties to the right of her own conservative camp is raising eyebrows in Paris and putting her in Macron’s crosshairs, the EU liberals’ unofficial team captain.

The tensions with von der Leyen come at a moment when right-to-far-right parties are expected to win more seats come June and centrist grouping of liberals in the European Parliament find itself on wobbly turf. 

And pressure is piling up on Macron at home while he battles an increasingly popular far-right National Rally and his closest ally in Europe, Dutchman Mark Rutte, looks for an off-ramp to NATO.

Unwilling — or perhaps unable — to pick a single face for their campaign, with Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas ruling herself out at the last minute, they unveiled a relatively unknown trio of MEPs Sandro Gozi, Valérie Hayer and Marie-Agnes Strack Zimmermann, a German MP who chairs the Bundestag’s defense committee to lead their campaign.

The liberals, who are gathering in Brussels on Wednesday to kick-start their campaign, are far from a cohesive whole. The campaign platform to be launched Wednesday night is composed of three separate streams: the classical liberal pan-European grouping of liberal parties ALDE where Rutte has long ruled the roost, a small Democratic party led by Macron ally François Bayrou and Macron’s own Renaissance, whose MEPs dominate the European Parliament group.

ALDE co-president Ilhan Kyuchyuk pushed back, saying: “In most cases Renew Europe was united [since 2019] and this will continue.”

Every vote counts

Still, every vote counts for von der Leyen, even from a fractured and fragmented coalition partner that is firing shots at her.

She will need a majority of 361 MEPs to back her in a vote later this year if, as is expected, the European Council nominates her for another five-year term. 

And von der Leyen will need to keep Macron and France on side. Her next term could prove to be tricky if she fails to listen to Paris’s growing list of grievances.

“We expect any Commission president not to flirt with extreme forces but to shape the EU from the political center with pro-Europeans,” said Valérie Hayer, who added that the future Commission needed to include liberals’ proposals.

But Europe’s liberals, grouped under the Renew Europe name in the European Parliament, aren’t packed with too much punch as recent polling indicates they are on shaky ground, making them a less powerful challenger to von der Leyen. 

POLITICO’s Poll of Polls suggests Renew could drop from its third-placed kingmaker position in the European Parliament to fourth or even fifth spot in the next Parliament, behind factions on the right-to-far-right. 

Dialing up the threats to not support von der Leyen could be a way for Renew to remain relevant and push their priorities for the next term in the Parliament. 

“It is implementation time for defense, competitiveness, Green Deal and a bold migration policy, this goes hand in hand with investments… Any candidate with Berlaymont ambition should be aware of those priorities,” said Hayer.

Von der Leyen’s European People’s Party grouping, conversely, looks likely to emerge as the largest grouping in the European Parliament once again after the June election, giving her conservative family the right — as they see it — to propose her for another term as Commission president.

To be convinced

“For us it’s not a done deal,” said ALDE co-president Kyuchyuk, referring to her group’s endorsement of von der Leyen. “This European Commission was successful on some issues but also had some doubts and hesitations,” he said, pointing to the Green Deal as an example and calling for the Commission to be more accountable to MEPs.

Macron’s man in Brussels Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market who reports to von der Leyen, was one of the first to launch a scathing attack on the European Commission president, questioning the extent of support she received from her own center-right family. 

Though the public denunciation of his boss provoked consternation among those close to Macron and even with Macron himself, the message reflected a consensus among Europe’s centrists, said MEP Sandro Gozi, one of Renew’s top team of three.

In 2019, Renew Europe joined a coalition with von der Leyen’s EPP and the Socialists to pass major pieces of legislation. | Andreea Campeanu/Getty Images

“We are in an electoral campaign, and I think that Thierry Breton stated what was the reality,” said Gozi, who slammed von der Leyen’s willingness to work with parties right of the EPP.

“If you ask me about Ursula von der Leyen, she has been clear in saying she doesn’t want to build up alliances with [far right’s group] ID, but she has been very ambiguous on [other far right group] ECR, and she should be much more clear,” said the Italian MEP, who aims to campaign on Macron’s list in France again. 

Romanians in the grouping have also said they won’t back von der Leyen, accusing her of turning a blind eye to corruption. 

“The truth is that she doesn’t come from our family,” said a person familiar with Renew’s campaign, who requested anonymity to speak more freely. 

In 2019, Renew Europe joined a coalition with von der Leyen’s EPP and the Socialists to pass major pieces of legislation.  

Some of Renew’s MEPs have controversially sided with the EPP when it ranged its forces against Green Deal laws such as on restoring nature, a sign that for all its criticism of the EPP’s rightward shift, some liberals are willing to get into bed with them at crucial moments.

Attacking von der Leyen for opening a door to populist parties might also come back to haunt Renew, though. In the Netherlands, the VVD party — a core pillar of ALDE — has been holding government formation talks with Geert Wilders.

“It was just coalition talks, they never engaged seriously about it,” said Kyuchyuk.