{"id":17847,"date":"2026-05-27T18:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/17847\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T18:08:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:08:27","slug":"berlin-asked-me-to-do-it-the-dangerous-strategy-of-some-socialists-in-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/17847\/","title":{"rendered":"“Berlin asked me to do it”: the dangerous strategy of some socialists in Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLast Monday in Strasbourg, the atmosphere was tense at a group meeting of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), especially among the German delegation, which is the third largest after the Spanish.
The trigger was a request to remove parliamentary immunity for a certain German MEP from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) \u2014 the main party in Germany\u2019s governing coalition<\/a> and the flagship of the European People\u2019s Party (EPP). An important note: the S&D group\u2019s unwritten rule is usually to vote in favor of lifting immunity.
“The meeting turned tense when Ren\u00e9 Repasi, leader of the German Social Democrats in Brussels, argued against withdrawing immunity and thereby saving a conservative MP”Discussed at the S&D meeting was the question of whether a vote already taken at the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) should be reconsidered. That committee had voted against the removal of immunity for the CDU parliamentarian. That sparked an internal discussion led by the German delegation against its own leader \u2014 Ren\u00e9 Repasi, president of the JURI commission and promoter of the vote against lifting immunity. The meeting turned even more tense when Repasi, leader of the German Social Democrats (SPD) in Brussels, defended his position: the S&Ds should vote “no” on the removal of immunity and thereby save the conservative MP.<\/p>\n

A messenger from the Chancellery
\nWatching Repasi play the role of the CDU\u2019s savior was hard for many to swallow. He\u2019s a professor and doctor of Law and the group\u2019s spokesman at the Legal Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

Several of Germany\u2019s Social Democratic MEPs rose up against the decision. The protection of a direct rival was, for them, an insult to their electoral bases. How would they explain in their districts that they\u2019d voted to protect the conservatives?
“The CDU\u2019s federal directorate had phoned the SPD leadership to ask the favor directly”It was then that Repasi revealed his reason: the defense had been requested in a message from Berlin, after the CDU\u2019s federal directorate phoned the SPD leadership to ask a favor directly. In Germany\u2019s fragile political landscape, the stability of alliances and federal governance compels tacit non-aggression from Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, in response to the growth of extreme parties. Reciprocity is therefore a currency of great value; and so Repasi executed the order.
Although much more critical in the corridors, the Spanish delegation maintained a low profile in public, because in the European Parliament, a favor granted to the German delegation is a loan to be reclaimed later, with interest, when Madrid needs shielding in sensitive debates on national policy or financial support for southern European priorities. Even so, many were surprised by Repasi\u2019s failure to discipline his own delegation and to arrive at the meeting without the situation resolved.<\/p>\n

The EPP bear-hug as strategic trap
\nBut to reduce that episode to a simple matter of internal debate would be to ignore the plate tectonics that operate beneath the S&D group in the European Parliament. Sources from the Social Democrats justify Repasi\u2019s move from a much broader logic that is vital to preserving Europe\u2019s fragile cordon sanitaire: the imperative need to maintain bridges of trust with Manfred Weber\u2019s EPP.
In today\u2019s European Parliament, forces of the radical right \u2014the ECR and Patriots for Europe\u2014 have increased their legislative influence since the last elections. Thus the current obsession of the S&D group is to halt any structural swings to the right by the EPP. Helping to save an MEP from the CDU was essentially a peace offering \u2014 and a message sent by Europe\u2019s S&D parties to its People\u2019s parties.
The problem is that this strategy of appeasement leaves the Social Democrats in the position of “responsible hostage.”\u00a0By willingly assuming the political and ethical costs of protecting a rival as a courtesy to the EPP, they risk paying the price of a loyalty pledge that the center-right often disrespects whenever it needs votes from the hard right to overturn Green Deal initiatives or to tighten immigration policy.<\/p>\n

“Weber and the EPP use their ability to make pacts with radical right groups to strengthen their negotiating position with the S&Ds in larger legislative concerns”However, Manfred Weber and the EPP can smell the structural weakness of the S&D group, which fears being exiled from decision-making. They use their ability to make pacts with radical right groups to strengthen their negotiating position vis-\u00e0-vis the S&Ds in larger legislative concerns.
The greatest danger of this recent immunity pact is the discursive gift that it hands to anti-system advocates and the radical right. For parties like the AfD or Vox, such moments are empirical proof of their narrative of transnational “partitocracy” and the political cartel in Brussels, where the two big political families pantomime confrontations for their home audiences but secretly agree and protect one other in committees and at plenary sessions of the European Parliament.
In the plenary, immunity was indeed preserved for the MEP in question, thus preserving an equilibrium in German politics and fuelling some hope of attracting the EPP toward the center \u2014 at the cost of blurring the strategy of Social Democrats.<\/p>\n

BONUS: Heads up, because in the parliamentary group of Germany\u2019s CDU, some are dreaming of a minority government, dispensing with the SPD altogether. Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed that debate yesterday in a video<\/a> shared on social media. But careful, because a future where the CDU might form an alliance with the AfD has already been written<\/a>: “If the Christian Democrats made a pact with the AfD, it would probably break up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Monday in Strasbourg, the atmosphere was tense at a group meeting of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[4760,4759,11662,18,11663,2845,11664,11665,11666,11667],"class_list":["post-17847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-agenda-publica","tag-agenda-publica-in-english","tag-alemania","tag-brussels","tag-cdu","tag-espana","tag-inmunidad","tag-parlamento-europeo","tag-partido-popular-europeo","tag-socialdemocracia"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116647880613418816","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}