In May, lawmakers from Europe’s ascendant right-wing parties crowded into a European Parliament hearing room to sketch out their political vision: the end of the cordon sanitaire, the election of a Parliament president with right-wing backing and, after 2029, a right-wing European Commission.
At the event, organized by the right-wing think tank Charlemagne Club, MEPs from the European People’s Party, the European Conservatives and Reformists, Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations argued that the right’s growing strength in national parliaments should now be translated into power at the EU level.
“I hope that this day will go down in history as the beginning of when we start to reclaim Europe back from the left,” said one of the panel’s organizers.
That premise, however, already feels outdated. The European right isn’t fighting to regain power from its opponents. It’s already exercising it.
Since the 2024 European elections, the ECR, PfE and ESN have expanded their influence through cooperation with the EPP. Even as party chief Manfred Weber insists that no structured alliance exists, conversations with more than a dozen lawmakers, aides and analysts suggest otherwise.
“It’s not true that this is just accidental joint voting, there is cooperation on a structural level,” said Sophia Russack, research fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies. “That means in concrete terms that rapporteurs, shadow rapporteurs and coordinators sit together and discuss positions that are voteable for parties of those groups.”
As the Parliament’s rightward shift sets the stage for next year’s midterm elections, the struggle over its leadership, agenda and political direction is already shaping the remainder of this legislative term.
In this first article in our series on the Parliament’s midterm reshuffle, we trace the origins of the right’s ascent and its growing alignment with the European People’s Party.
The right-wing firewall falls
The 2024 European elections reshaped the political dynamics of the Parliament, particularly within the EPP. The emergence of Patriots for Europe as the chamber's third-largest group confronted the center-right bloc led by Manfred Weber with a strategic choice.
For a segment of the EPP, the far right's growing strength offered an opportunity to build more conservative majorities on issues ranging from migration and border control to environmental deregulation. One of the staunchest advocates for that strategy is Branko Grims (EPP, SI), who has publicly called for closer cooperation with lawmakers from the PfE and ESN groups.
“Only through such cooperation is it still possible to save Europe, make it safe again, and unlock its development potential,” he told The Parliament in an email, while also denouncing the term “far-right“ as offensive.
Grims was among the attendees at a Charlemagne Club event in May, where lawmakers including Charlie Weimers (ECR, SE) and René Aust (ESN, DE) stressed their alignment on key legislative files, like the contentious migrant returns regulation.
But that vote wasn’t an isolated case, analysts said, but merely the most visible expression of a deepening cooperation between the EPP and right-wing groups during the current mandate.
“We see the EPP on policy files now trying to create a right-wing policy coalition,” said Wouter Wolfs, a professor at KU Leuven researching political parties. “This coalition is one that has matured over time. It started with procedural issues and resolutions, but now it's penetrating into the policy areas.”
The trend began with the so-called "Venezuela majority," when the EPP sided with right-wing parties on a series of resolutions concerning Venezuela's elections. From there, cooperation expanded beyond foreign policy into procedural battles, including efforts to block the creation of an EU ethics body and support for shared budget amendments.
So far, Weber's party has maintained that it accepts support from the right without offering anything in return, claiming its objective is simply to secure backing for EPP priorities.
“That is, of course, a signal to everybody else in his group,” said Russack. “Whatever it takes means also maybe making a dirty deal as long as we get up on those paths.”
Weber’s cabinet didn’t reply to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Mainstreaming the ECR
In the current mandate, the Parliament’s cordon sanitaire has proven to be a somewhat blurry concept, with the ECR having steadily moved closer to the center of the policymaking machinery, according to MEPs and aides.
Since 2024, the group has tried to refashion itself into a trustworthy, policy-oriented, pro-European conservative body within the EP — one capable of bridging the gap between the EPP and parties further to the right. That effort has been helped by the important role ECR leaders such as Giorgia Meloni and Bart de Wever play in the European Council.
“We see a pro-European, constructive force that can be more dynamic,” said Vicente Domecq, a parliamentary assistant working on digital policy for ECR. “The center-right and conservative force across the European Union is continuing to grow, and that should reflect the balance of power within the Parliament.”
ECR is also an important glue between the much more nationalist, far-right parties within the EP and the more pro-European centrist groups. “A right-wing coalition without the ECR in the middle is not going to happen,” said one of the organizers of the May event.
An analysis of Parliament voting data between the 2024 elections and July 2025 by the Jacques Delors Institute and ELIAMEP shows how the political distance between the EPP and ECR is only slightly larger than the distance between the EPP and S&D. By contrast, PfE and ESN remain much further from the EPP on the ideological spectrum.
Never was the softening of the cordon sanitaire more glaring than in the run-up to the returns regulation vote in March. In the weeks leading up to the vote a series of WhatsApp groups linking the ECR and EPP — organized by Weimers — helped coordinate what would become the right’s biggest victory yet: a hardline migration position backed by the EPP and every right-wing party in the chamber.
The returns regulation passed with 62% support, supported almost unanimously by the EPP and unanimously by the PfE, ECR, and ESN.
But the moment also carried consequences for Weber.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz lashed out at his fellow party member for relying on far-right votes, telling journalists that “This will be stopped and … there will be consequences if necessary.”
Despite doing a good job at keeping the group together since 2014, Russack said, Weber is increasingly facing difficulties handling the vast internal differences among national delegations. "He has gotten stricter in the last years because he sees that the external pressure now is much bigger on the EPP than it used to be, so he tries to exert more internal control."
Early this year, the EPP even introduced new rules to deter internal rebellions, and now, the group’s presidency is mulling whether Grims should face the music for publicly advocating cooperation with far-right forces. A final decision is expected by mid-June.
The midterm reckoning
The influence of right-wing forces in Parliament is also visible in the formal and informal technical and committee meetings that drive much of the policymaking.
In committees such as the ones on Civil Liberties and Justice and Home Affairs, MEPs are much more inclined to take right-wing positions, an aide working with PfE said, whereas on single market, banking and financial regulation files, the EPP cannot build with the right.
Even so, a lack of experience in building stable majorities is still holding back the PfE and ESN, according to several parliamentary assistants from PfE, Renew and the Greens.
“Both PfE and ESN are often perceived as acting in bad faith, as incapable of understanding the culture of compromise, poorly acquainted with how EU institutions actually function and operating with a distorted conception of the Union,” the PfE aide said.
That could change by 2029, when the Parliament’s right-wing faction hopes that success in national elections will lead to big wins on EU level.
“The Parliament is not yet coming to terms with the changing reality,” said MEP Alexander Sell (ESN, DE). “If you look at the polls in Germany, we are polling twice as strong now as in the European elections two years ago, so it's just a question of mathematics that eventually Europe will turn further to the right.”
Whether that political arithmetic ultimately adds up remains to be seen. What is certain is that, with the mid-term reshuffling approaching, the EPP will have to decide to either continue working with the political right or remain loyal to its traditional centrist allies.
If it chooses the former, Roberta Metsola’s bid for an unprecedented third term as Parliament chief may hinge on right-wing votes. If recommitting to the center, the EPP risks courting the anger of the Parliament’s third-largest force.
“The Patriots have been extremely loyal to the EPP and helped them push for their policies,” Russack said. “So I would be very surprised if they did not make a big fuss if the EPP tried to exclude them from the top jobs again."
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