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Since 1979 the European Parliament has been run by an understanding between the centre-right and the centre-left, joined later by liberals and Greens. Parties to the right of the centre-right were kept out of majorities and of posts, an arrangement known by the French term cordon sanitaire or the German one, firewall. After the 2024 election those parties hold about a quarter of the seats, and the centre-right can for the first time form a majority with them instead of with the left. It has begun to do so on some votes, while denying any alliance.
The wider dispute and each side's full account: The struggle over power inside the European Union.
The European People's Party and the groups to its right halted the European Parliament's rule-of-law monitoring mission to Italy. The EPP nominated Mureșan as Romanian prime minister. A Bulgarian EPP delegate opened a procedure against the SNS. Within the EPP, pressure grew to expel the SNS over the Mladić funeral.
Two majorities. The European People's Party, the centre-right, can pass a law with Socialists and liberals, or with the three groups to its right. It uses the first for the Commission and the budget and, increasingly, the second to loosen climate and company rules and to tighten migration policy.
Which parties count as beyond the line. Meloni's group is treated as a partner. The group around Le Pen and Orban, and the smaller one around the AfD, are denied committee chairs they would be due by size. The line has moved before and each move is disputed.
Whether exclusion works. The excluded parties have grown in almost every election held under it.
The group is the largest and was elected to cut regulation, control migration and restore industry. It looks for majorities for that programme and does not ask who else votes for a sound text. It makes no agreements with parties that oppose the Union, Ukraine or the rule of law. If Socialists and Greens want to keep the old majority they should stop blocking what voters asked for.
A quarter of Europe's voters are represented by parties that the others have agreed in advance to ignore. Those parties govern Italy, share power in several other members and lead the polls in France and Germany. The firewall is an arrangement by which parties that lose elections keep the posts. It is breaking because the centre-right's own voters want what the right proposes.
The centre-right's leaves out that published messages showed closer contacts with the AfD than it had acknowledged, and that it disciplines its members for appearing with parties whose votes it accepts.
The national-conservatives' leaves out that they sit in three groups because they cannot agree on Russia, Ukraine or the economy; that Le Pen herself had the AfD expelled from her group in 2024 as too extreme; and that the parliament is reclaiming millions in funds misused by their former group.
The Socialists', Liberals' and Greens' leaves out that Greens voted with the AfD in January to send the Mercosur trade agreement to court; that the Danish Social Democrats kept power by adopting the right's migration policy; and that ten years of the firewall coincide with the growth of the parties behind it.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
Per-week distribution of events. Click a bar to see that week's top events.
Click a week bar to select. Light blue = active week.
The centre-right promised in 2024 to govern with the pro-European centre, took the Commission presidency on those votes, and now legislates with parties that admire Moscow and would dismantle the Union. Every such vote makes the next one normal. That is how the centre-right in other countries ended as the junior partner of those it meant to use.
