STRASBOURG — The European People’s Party is riding high on a week of policy wins — and its powerful German leaders, party Chair Manfred Weber and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are taking a victory lap.

With Brussels powerbroker Weber as a close ally, Merz has used the EPP’s dominant position across the European Commission, Parliament and Council to advance the party’s agenda, slashing anti-deforestation and green supply chain reporting rules, boosting deportations to third countries, and reversing the combustion engine ban.

Having run his spring electoral campaign on a promise of deregulation and boosting business, the German chancellor was quick to sell the moves back home as tangible results.

“It is good that the Commission is now opening up regulation in the automotive sector following the clear signal from the federal government,” Merz told BILD, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, on Tuesday. Weber, too, celebrated the result to BILD, heralding it as the product of late-night talks with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who also hails from the EPP.

The partnership between the two German heavyweights was cemented at January’s EPP leaders’ summit in Berlin. There, Merz flaunted his ties to Europe’s center-right elite — including von der Leyen — to impress domestic voters, while Weber flexed his party muscle by delivering a parade of prime ministers to Merz’s doorstep, bolstering his own grip on the EPP.

Weber said the EPP’s achievements under his leadership address the issues that drive Europe’s voters toward the far right. “My plan and my ambitions as EPP leader were clear: I want to stop populism in Europe … I want to take away the reasons of attack, the points of attack from the populists against Europe,” he told a press conference on Tuesday.

The biggest victory for Merz and Weber has been to secure a Commission proposal reversing the EU’s de facto combustion engine ban by lowering the emission reduction target for car producers from 100 percent to 90 percent.

Both publicly celebrated the move last week before it was officially announced, irking the liberals and the center-left, who saw it as von der Leyen giving her own party concessions behind closed doors.

Weber going to the press and calling victory “even before it is decided in the Commission’s college … is unacceptable,” said Renew Europe chief Valérie Hayer.  

“We have a major problem of operation today with the Commission and within the platform,” she argued, referring to the centrist coalition in Parliament supporting von der Leyen’s second term.

Straining ties

While Merz has stuck with the Social Democrats in Berlin and rebuffed any cooperation with the far-right Alternative for Germany, Weber in Brussels has embraced counting on votes from the right of the aisle.

On some deregulation and migration files, the EPP has pressed through its own positions by abandoning its traditional allies in the Parliament — the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the liberals of Renew Europe — who accuse the party of teaming up with far-right groups to ram through its agenda.

The EPP insists it is not teaming up with far-right parties but merely pushing to deliver on its electoral promises.

That includes a bill to slash green supply chain rules for businesses, a package to water down anti-deforestation rules for companies, and a set of new rules allowing EU countries to deport migrants to specific third countries even if they are not nationals.

The far-right Patriots for Europe group and the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) insist they haven’t changed their views to compromise with the EPP, but that the EPP has adopted their views.

The co-chair of ECR, Patryk Jaki of Poland’s Law and Justice, said on Tuesday it was always their idea to water down the Green Deal, a sentiment echoed by Patriots lawmakers.

“We are happy that our influence is rising, but this is not because we are ECR, but because we were right from the beginning,” he said.

The EPP has also pushed forward with other simplification packages with its traditional centrist allies, such as the EU’s farmer’s financing scheme revamp and a bill to simplify rules for defense businesses.

“Things are not on the right track, the way it’s looking is that the EPP has decided to give up on negotiating with us. They’ve decided it’s more convenient for them to negotiate with the far right,” said S&D chief Iratxe García on Tuesday.

“Don’t call on us to guarantee institutional stability in Europe, but then negotiate policy with others,” she added.

García told POLITICO in an interview that von der Leyen and her Commission are “buying into” U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda by embracing the EPP’s deregulatory drive and complained that the nine simplification packages spanning several policy areas — so-called omnibuses — are appearing without prior notice and with no impact assessments.

Despite the growing tensions, both liberals and Socialists are committed to constructively collaborating with the EPP where possible, García and Hayer said.