That\u2019s music to the ears of far-right politicians around the bloc, who might think the EPP\u2019s move to declare them enemy No. 1 plays right into their hands. French firebrand Marine Le Pen and Germany\u2019s Alternative for Deutschland leader Alice Weidel will relish the attention as they challenge for power, while Hungarian PM Viktor Orb\u00e1n is hardly camera-shy. <\/p>\n
THE LOSERS<\/p>\n
Ursula von der Leyen\u2019s Green Deal legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n In speech after speech, EPP leaders and heads of government used the EU\u2019s once-vaunted, now oft-derided Green Deal as their punching bag. While they continued to claim fighting climate change was important, they distanced themselves from anything that could lead to job losses.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere would our industry and jobs be today, if we had not stopped the ideological climate policy \u00e0 la Frans Timmermans?\u201d Weber said in his speech, in a direct rebuke of the EU\u2019s former Green Deal commissioner. He celebrated the EPP\u2019s success in delaying and watering down green legislation, which was once the hallmark of the von der Leyen Commission.<\/p>\n In response, Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho back in Brussels said von der Leyen \u201cfully stands by the Green Deal,\u201d insisting it remains \u201ca flagship of hers.\u201d<\/p>\n The EU\u2019s centrist coalition<\/strong><\/p>\n Few relationships are more toxic than the centrist majority composed of the EPP, Socialists and the liberals. Despite fierce disagreements, they\u2019re stuck in their dysfunctional grand coalition.<\/p>\n Weber took aim at his centrist allies, blaming their \u201cweak\u201d programs for the far-right surge, arguing the Socialists had \u201cgiven up\u201d on the working class, and that liberals (and Greens) appeal only to the \u201cnice city quarters of well-educated, privileged voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Migrants<\/strong><\/p>\n The tough rhetoric against migrants was unmissable.<\/p>\n The EPP passed a resolution during the congress stating that asylum-seekers shouldn\u2019t be allowed into the EU if they\u2019re coming from a safe third country, and that applications could be processed in third countries, in a tacit endorsement of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s Albania model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That\u2019s music to the ears of far-right politicians around the bloc, who might think the EPP\u2019s move to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[10541,5108,2311,2000,299,5187,1699,1105,31620,1945,1824,2440,806,30995,44,11665,269,7337,5111,33590,46,48,33591,104,1220,1781],"class_list":{"0":"post-65904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-albania","9":"tag-asylum","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-far-right","16":"tag-frans-timmermans","17":"tag-friedrich-merz","18":"tag-germany","19":"tag-giorgia-meloni","20":"tag-industry","21":"tag-manfred-weber","22":"tag-marine-le-pen","23":"tag-meps","24":"tag-music","25":"tag-olaf-scholz","26":"tag-parliament","27":"tag-petteri-orpo","28":"tag-policy","29":"tag-rights","30":"tag-sean-kelly","31":"tag-spain","32":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","33":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114433083995350759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65904","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=65904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}