BRUSSELS — Europe’s center right has two weeks to decide on the strategy that will define its next four years in the European Parliament: Dilute its ambition and stick with traditional mainstream allies — or work with the far right to get the job done.  

While governments in EU capitals grapple with the rise of populists, and centrist parties struggle to hold their ground, pan-European groups in the Parliament are confronting similar challenges. Last week’s failure to pass a landmark law aimed at cutting red tape underlined how little room for maneuver the center still has.

The center-right European People’s Party “still has the choice between working with the far right that wants to demolish Europe, or a stable pro-European coalition,” Bas Eickhout, co-chair of the Greens, considered one of the EPP’s centrist allies, told POLITICO.

After the EPP’s failed attempt last week to pass a bill cutting green reporting obligations for companies ― because some center-left MEPs rebelled against their party line ― the far-right Patriots for Europe group called on the EPP to abandon its old allies from the center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the liberal Renew Europe group and the Greens. The Patriots want the EPP to make a deal with them instead, in order to pass the bill when lawmakers vote again on Nov. 12.

“I think that a number of EPP members realized that they had made a mistake in allying themselves with the architects of the Green Deal,” said Pascale Piera, the Patriots lawmaker leading work on this file.

EU leaders are pressuring the Parliament to move the file forward within the next month so Brussels can prove it’s capable of cutting red tape for businesses and boost its ailing economy.  

The debate over the law is forcing a reckoning for the EPP, which must decide whether to uphold the so-called cordon sanitaire — the unwritten rule dictating that groups in the center don’t work with the far right — or declare the centrist coalition is failing and throw in their lot with the other side of the aisle.

That could cause a seismic rupture in the way politics has always been done in Brussels.

Race for legitimacy 

Political groups in the Parliament are extremely divided over how to implement the new Brussels simplification agenda. While groups to the right of the hemicycle call for a major rollback of EU rules — particularly environmental laws, which they see as the culprit for stagnating growth — those on the left are fighting to preserve the rules they helped craft in the previous mandate.

The European Commission put forward its omnibus simplification bill because it wants to reduce reporting obligations for companies under the bloc’s corporate sustainability disclosure and supply chain transparency rules, core parts of the European Green Deal. 

It’s the first in a series of proposals aimed at cutting red tape to boost European competitiveness in the second term of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a leading member of the EPP.

For weeks leading up to the failed vote in Strasbourg, the EPP had flirted with right-wing and far-right groups.

It negotiated with the Patriots, the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) and the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) groups to get them to back the legislation, only to then use that agreement to persuade the liberals and Socialists to scale back their demands and agree to major cuts to the laws. Although the latter groups agreed, some of the Socialists refused to vote in favor, causing the proposal to be rejected.

Lead EPP negotiator Jörgen Warborn called the result “disappointing” and said it was up to the Socialists to clarify their position.

‘Reliable majority’

Even though the centrist coalition failed to pass the bill, the liberals and Social Democrats hope the EPP will keep faith with the center by making enough concessions to get Socialist lawmakers to vote in favor.  

“There has to be a text put to a vote that can have a majority in the plenary, and the more reliable majority is EPP with S&D, Renew and the Greens,” Socialists negotiator René Repasi told POLITICO.  “That’s what the final text has to reflect.”

But that’s not the direction the right-wing groups hope things will go.

For the Patriots’ Piera, the law in its initial form, negotiated with the far right, has enough backing to pass. She said she was “surprised” the EPP abandoned that version.

“The EPP will not be able to move further to the left than it has done so far, as the discussions will be public and their core electorate are people who are very attentive to the health of the economic sector,” she said.

A Parliament official from the ESN also told POLITICO that the group “will strive for a solution that resembles [the first proposal].”

Yet critics fear the precedent that this would set. Lara Wolters, the former Socialist negotiator who quit because of the deal, blamed the “EPP’s refusal to make a fundamental political choice on whether to cooperate as a matter of principle with the groups to the EPP’s right, or those to EPP’s left.”

Setting a precedent

Leaning on the far right to get the bill through “would show a strategic direction for the EPP,” Andreas Rasche, professor of business in society at the Copenhagen Business School told POLITICO, adding this would set a “dangerous precedent” for legislative work going forward.

While the right-wing bloc may be able to strike a deal in the Parliament, the S&D’s Repasi warned that the text could change following negotiations with EU countries. Last time the EPP tried to gut an anti-deforestation bill to cut red tape with the support of the far right, EU countries rebuffed the maximalist proposal and the Parliament had to backtrack.  

“The rapporteur should keep in mind he still needs a majority for the trilogue results as well,” Repasi said, referring to the final vote to take place in the Parliament following final negotiations with the Commission and EU governments.