EU leaders are fine for votes to pass in the European Parliament with the help of far-right lawmakers – if it helps speeding up the red tape-slashing agenda, Parliament President Roberta Metsola said at a press conference after meeting with the bloc’s national chiefs on Thursday.
EU and national leaders have been pushing to cut back bureaucracy to boost the bloc’s economy and competitiveness. But lawmakers in the Parliament on Wednesday surprisingly rejected a compromise – cobbled together by centrist forces in the chamber – that would have seen a slew of EU sustainability rules for big corporations rolled back.
Metsola, under pressure from institutions like the European Council to deliver a rapid-fire slashing of red tape, said the result reflected the challenging political environment in the Parliament. Yet, she received direct instructions from bloc’s national leaders during the Thursday meeting.
“To be very clear, the message to me from the Council is: ‘get the numbers where you find them,’” she told press afterwards.
An EU official familiar with the negotiations told Euractiv that several EU countries have recently been more concerned with ensuring that Parliament passes simplification legislation rather than which majorities make it happen.
The rejected file will be put to another vote in the Parliament in mid-November. Now, it is a possibility that the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) – the biggest group in Parliament and Metsola’s party family – could try to shore up a majority with the help of right-to-far-right lawmakers.
However, finding common ground with centrist groups was his first priority, Jörgen Warborg, the EPP chief negotiator on yesterday’s rejected file, said on Wednesday.
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Metsola also stressed that the European Parliament does not have “government majorities” but must build them on a case-by-case basis – referring to compromise-building across party lines.
She had also spoken to national leaders about how they could move things forward.
“I would also need their help to ensure that the members of the European Parliament from their countries actually reflect the agenda on which they are united,” the Parliament president said.
Arriving at the summit, German Chancellor Merz found stern word for the Parliament’s decision, calling it a “fatal wrong decision” that needs to be reversed. “We need to talk to the parliamentary groups on how this could work.”
An EU diplomat said there wasn’t any criticism of Metsola personally on Thursday, but a broad agreement that the EU needs to move ahead quickly with its push for simplification.
“The conversation was constructive. We need to get the machine to work,” the diplomat said.
Thomas Møller-Nielsen contributed reporting.
(vib)
