EU in crisis: will the Eurocrats survive?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster, on Saturday 18 October.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

In July, Ursula von der Leyen survived a no-confidence vote as president of the European Commission – the first time the so-called ‘nuclear option’ had been used by the European Parliament since November 2014. Though the motion was defeated, the debates before, during and after demonstrated the pressure on the alliance of centrist parties in the European Parliament. The EU’s weakness was demonstrated by the thoroughly one-sided trade deal it was forced to agree with President Trump.

The pressure on centrists in the EU institutions reflects similar difficulties in many of the EU’s nation states. Chancellor Merz’s CDU-led coalition government in Germany is nose-diving in the polls. The electorate voted for change and ended up with something very similar to the previous coalition – all because the CDU refuses to work with the increasingly popular AfD. Or consider the political instability of the French government, after President Macron called a snap election in 2024 that resulted in a meaningless and hence fragile coalition of the ‘anything but’ Le Pen’s National Rally party.

At the heart of the situation lies growing public anger and raging debates on key issues such as mass migration, the EU’s role in a changing international landscape and the impact of the EU’s Green Deal and Net Zero policies. All these issues and more, such as the farmer protests, played a significant role in the European Parliamentary elections of June 2024, where the so-called ‘far-right’ made significant gains in several nations. Whilst the ‘cordon sanitaire’ against the far-right remains in place for now, the highly instrumental alliance at the centre, with little common purpose other than to remain in power, is fracturing.

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) – the party of von der Leyen – has already worked with parties to its right to water down anti-greenwashing and deforestation legislation, as well as to call for greater accountability over the EU’s funding of NGOs. This has resulted in cries of foul play from the EPP’s supposed partners on the left (Socialists, Liberals and Greens) and warnings to von der Leyen not to backtrack on the Green Deal.

With an increasingly febrile atmosphere over mass migration, flatlining economic productivity, punishingly high energy prices and the EU struggling to navigate geopolitical challenges from Trump to China and Russia – can the centre hold or is a fundamental political realignment increasingly likely? As the evolving political situation continues to unfold within European nation states – with national elections due in Czechia, Netherlands, Slovenia, Hungary, Cyprus, Sweden, Latvia and Denmark over the coming year and unstable coalitions struggling on in France, Germany, Austria and Poland – what are the prospects for the future of the centrist parties clinging to power across the EU?

SPEAKERS
Pieter Cleppe
editor-in-chief, BrusselsReport.eu

Suzanne Evans
director, Political Insight

James Holland
political advisor, European Parliament

Richard Schenk
research fellow, MCC Brussels

CHAIR
Tony Gilland
chief of staff, MCC Brussels; associate fellow, Academy of Ideas