But the party walks a tightrope. While not actively negotiating with the far right, the EPP can often depend on its votes in the European Parliament, becoming bedfellows in areas such as migration and deregulation \u2015 exactly the sort of issues, the EPP feels, that motivated voters to support it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to see a different situation in the European Parliament,\u201d Weber said. \u201cBut they are here, they have a vote \u2026 and the EPP has one principle and that is following our promises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weber personally, and the EPP more broadly, have been criticized by the Socialists, liberals and Greens for tilting rightward after the June Parliament election in both policy and rhetoric. Those critics argue the EPP has cozied up to politicians they consider extreme, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, which Weber deems sufficiently moderate<\/a> to team up with <\/strong>in a loose coalition dubbed the Venezuela majority<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Right-wing answers<\/p>\n The EPP is home to heavyweights such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Since last June\u2019s election it has held control of the EU\u2019s main institutions \u2015 the Commission, the Parliament and the Council \u2015 and so holds sway over swaths of decision-making.<\/p>\n Weber, a member of the Christian Social Union (the Bavarian sister party of Merz\u2019s CDU), said the election results \u2014 which gave the EPP the largest number of MEPs \u2014 followed a surge of far-right forces signaling that citizens want right-wing answers to their problems and ending the center-left consensus that had dominated the previous term in Brussels.<\/p>\n His ideal scenario, Weber said, is to work with centrist parties to enable a right-wing shift. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But the party walks a tightrope. While not actively negotiating with the far right, the EPP can often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[13861,768,1194,473,5898,33,2000,299,5187,2915,1105,1945,1824,2440,2348,2199,30995,11665,6657,5111,46,2822,48,104,1220],"class_list":{"0":"post-121467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-adolf-hitler","9":"tag-borders","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-defense","12":"tag-donald-tusk","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-european","17":"tag-exclusive","18":"tag-far-right","19":"tag-friedrich-merz","20":"tag-germany","21":"tag-giorgia-meloni","22":"tag-history","23":"tag-italy","24":"tag-manfred-weber","25":"tag-meps","26":"tag-migration","27":"tag-parliament","28":"tag-policy","29":"tag-regions-cohesion","30":"tag-rights","31":"tag-spain","32":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114549314336052436","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}