7 unknowns that will shape the next European Parliament

HELLO. There are 13 days until June 6 and national campaigning around the EU is shaking the foundations of the European Parliament. France’s hyperactive electioneering has already lobbed a grenade into the Identity & democracy group, and also threatens the future of the centrist Renew grouping (more on that below).
There are also several other unknown factors that could reshape the next Parliament, which I want to explore in our penultimate EU Election Playbook before polls open.
This all matters in the short-term, of course, because whoever the European Council nominates as the next Commission president — Ursula von der Leyen, Mario Draghi? —needs to be backed by 361 MEPs. Jean-Claude Juncker managed it by 46 votes in 2014, and von der Leyen by just 9 in 2019. Will that downward trend continue? Fail to cross that threshold and the EU would be thrown into an unprecedented crisis when the vote takes place, which could come as early as Friday, 19 July. 
7 FACTORS THAT WILL SHAPE THE NEXT PARLIAMENT
Bluff or blow-up: Will Renew split? With the liberal VVD poised to enter a coalition government with far-right Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Renew Europe’s president Valérie Hayer has been strongly intimating that she wants to boot out the VVD, exposing the long-running rift in the centrist grouping between social progressives and old-school liberals.
It would be an extraordinary purge given that the VVD’s Mark Rutte was the co-founder of Renew with Hayer’s Renaissance in 2019. Could the self-proclaimed kingmakers be about to split? Or is Hayer merely electioneering with a French hat on?
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Hayer’s move is very, very risky. That’s not only because she’s a new president of the group who came from relative obscurity, but also given how deep the ties are — and remember, it’s ALDE that has the EU money, not Macron who’s unaffiliated at the EU party level. Denmark’s Venstre has already come out to support the VVD. Her comments would be awkward to row back from on June 10. But her co-campaigner Sandro Gozi was non-committal at Thursday’s EBU debate, suggesting it’s only a red line to cooperate with the far-right at the EU level, not the national — which is a frankly odd distinction.
Will ID survive, thrive or dive? This week’s bombshell move by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally to sever ties with Alternative for Germany and exclude them from their Identity & Democracy group could have far-reaching far-right consequences. The move may play well chez elle, but Le Pen can say au revoir to having the third largest group in Parliament, a real possibility before now. Even if they attract new members from the Netherlands, it’s unlikely they’d be able to compensate for losing a potentially 17-strong delegation of Germans.
It’s led to rumors that Le Pen might want to ditch ID altogether and try to slot into the ECR or create a broader far-right alliance with Giorgia Meloni  — but why would she throw in the prestige and money-making capabilities of ruling her own ID group and party? Rumors of a massive far-right tie-up are nothing new, and have always failed before, but I’m reminded of a press conference in the EP last month that featured all three of the far-right camps: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, and National Rally candidate Fabrice Leggeri. This is all unless a Franco-German rapprochement happens after the election (perhaps AfD is readmitted sans Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystron?).
Where will Orbán go? With the far-right Germans out of the ID group, Orbán has more options on the table to bring his likely 10 MEPs in the next Parliament out of the barren hinterland of the “non-attached” grouping — something he’s clearly desperate to achieve.
Orbán’s preference, as he’s made clear, is to join the ECR group led by Polish nationalists and Italian PM Meloni. But that’s already created huge ructions among the vocally pro-Atlanticist, pro-Ukraine parts of ECR, such as the Czechs, Finns and Swedes. And does Meloni really need to rock the boat by bringing Orbán into the fold when she’s got a pretty sweet deal with Ursula von der Leyen going?
Will Meloni support von der Leyen? According to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, the centrist coalition of EPP, S&D and Renew will still have enough votes to reach the 361 absolute majority of MEPs that von der Leyen will need in Parliament (if she’s nominated by the EU Council).
But given there will be renegades within those groups, it’s not comfy. That’s why von der Leyen gave her clearest comments yet that she’s willing to work with Meloni. The tricky thing for the EPP is that the more they lean toward Meloni, the tougher things get with their traditional partners. The question now is not so much what is the EPP’s red line, but what is the S&D’s? 
Who will lead the S&D? A power struggle is bubbling atop the second largest group, which is led by Iratxe García, the number two on Pedro Sánchez’s election list. The Spanish socialists have seen their strongest allies, the Portuguese, routed, and tensions have rumbled with the Italians in recent years, but could the southern Europe delegations team up to block a German Social Democratic takeover?
Having an Italian in charge could give potency to the center-left’s challenge to Meloni. Group leader aside, the socialists will also likely need to come up with a name as part of an expected power-sharing deal with the EPP for the presidency of the European Parliament. I spoke to García by phone this week, and she told me: “I’m of course open to continue leading the group, but we have to wait, we have to respect the internal negotiation inside the group. I’m thinking [about what is] best for the group, not for my personal position.”
A new group on the hard left? Sahra Wagenknecht is rumored to be interested in starting a political grouping in the European Parliament with her new anti-immigration party, having broken with Die Linke last year.
Former Parliament Secretary General Klaus Welle mused about a potential new grouping on a panel this week, suggesting that potential partners could be the Italian 5Star Movement, who are expected to do well, and Robert Fico’s Smer, who have been suspended from the S&D group. Would they have enough to muster the requisite 23 MEPs from 7 countries to form a group? Doubtful. The 5Stars, who we currently project to get a whopping 13 seats, have courted the Greens and the Socialists this term, so they are another pivotal delegation to watch. 
Where will new parties go? European elections are truly won by having the largest group, so newly-created parties and/or those that are currently barely represented in the Parliament are a much sought-after prize.
Keep your eyes on Péter Magyar’s TISZA party in Hungary, a challenger to Viktor Orbán who is hoping to join the EPP group and could get a whopping six seats, or the populist farmers’ party the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) in the Netherlands, which is also gunning for the EPP and projected to get two seats, or AUR, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, a right-wing populist party that could bring six seats to ECR. Then there’s Bulgaria’s Revival, which could get 3 MEPs into the ID group, Italy’s Green-Left alliance AVS is projected to have four, and Sumar in Spain could get five seats.
If Parliament’s group membership remained unchanged after the EU election, the Identity and Democracy (ID) group would overtake the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) as the leading group to the right of the European People’s Party.
According to a May Poll of Polls projection of the next Parliament, the ECR group’s numbers would stagnate, despite advances by Spain’s VOX, Romania’s AUR and, above all, the Brothers of Italy of PM Giorgia Meloni.
The ID group, meanwhile, would overtake ECR, ballooning up to 85 lawmakers under the same projection.
France’s National Rally would become the group’s leading party by far. Germany’s AfD and Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands would bolster the group as well, with further — smaller — wins for Austria’s FPÖ, Belgium’s Flemish Interest, and Portugal’s Chega.
That’s the projection for an Identity and Democracy group that includes Alternative for Germany.
Booting out the German MEPs costs the ID one-fifth of its projected number of MEPs and undermines its chances of becoming the Parliament’s third-largest group without further reshuffling.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz — polling at around 10 MEPs who don’t currently sit with any group — could complicate that picture further. Then there are the parties who may not want to stay put: Belgium’s New Flemish Alliance, for one, has signaled it no longer feels “at home” in the ECR group.
POLITICO Poll of Polls seat projection per political group between January 2022 and May 2024.
In rural Bulgaria, the mayor collects the trash
There’s a double vote in Bulgaria on June 9, with a general election being held alongside the European Parliament ballot.
The prospect of deadlock is high, although the center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party, led by former PM Boyko Borissov, has suggested joining forces with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which was founded in 1990 to represent the rights of Muslim minorities.
“We will do everything possible — where there are mayors of GERB and DPS — for people to feel better,” said Borissov at a recent campaign event in Kurdzhali.
To many, that seems like an uneasy match.
In the village of Borino, in the Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria’s south, the DPS is the ruling party.
Mustafa Tair, a local businessman who grew up in the village, said the party has veered far from its origins and is now made up of former police and security services, in no way sympathetic to the needs of the Muslim population. 
“When I was a kid, I remember being elated to see the first member of parliament from DPS representing us,” said Tair. “Now, it has turned into a financial organization and those that vote for it hope their job prospects will improve.”
Perhaps the most telling sign of DPS’ transformation came in October 2023, when Delyan Peevski, a U.S.-sanctioned oligarch and media mogul, became co-chair of the party.
Tair was once a donor to DPS but he has stopped supporting the party and encouraged his friends and family to do the same. But the people of Borino say they are afraid after years of repression. 
“Even if they say, ‘yes I’m with you, let’s change things’ the next day, you’ll see them having coffee with the mayor’s clique,” Tair said. He says he won’t vote in the national election but will vote for the reformist, anti-corruption coalition We Continue the Change & Democratic Bulgaria in the European one.
In Chepintsi — some 93km southeast of Borino — the current and former mayors won on an independent ticket by forming a ragtag coalition from every political side, to root out DPS.
Chepintsi is almost 100 percent Muslim population and the only village in the region not to be a DPS stronghold.
The municipal city hall in nearby Rudozem is still run by DPS and it gets to decide on the budget for Chepintsi. The latter’s independence is punished with financial restrictions, the mayor, Riza Bashev, 38, said. For instance, there is no money for a trash collector, which means the mayor and some of his peers empty the public trash cans.
“I clean the bins, the ex-mayor cuts the hedges, and we get on with it,” Bashev said.
by Antoaneta Roussi
Antoaneta’s full story will be published soon.
CAMPAIGN CALENDAR: 
— EPP lead candidate Ursula von der Leyen will be in Germany for the next few days of her campaign, Playbook is told. On Wednesday 29, the EPP holds a youth event in Brussels.
— Socialists’ lead candidate Nicolas Schmit will be campaigning in Barcelona on Monday and then travel to Austria Tuesday. 
— The Greens’ Bas Eickhout will be in Italy on May 28 and in Croatia on May 29.
Read von der Leyen’s texts! The EPP campaign has created a public Whatsapp channel to update people on her campaign. It currently has 1160 followers. 
Parliament’s internal horse-trading has already begun: The top officials who manage the Parliament’s seven political groups have begun regular meetings to hammer out who will get what roles in the next legislature, and how the cordon sanitaire blocking the far-right from key positions will function, Playbook has learnt. Nothing can be really decided until the groups have their meetings in Brussels after the election but technical talks are underway. Aside from a rollover 2.5-year presidency term that Roberta Metsola is gunning for, the next top jobs to be decided are the 14 vice presidents and five quaestors in the Bureau who handle the assembly’s internal affairs, and then the 20 committee chairs, all the way down to the fourth vice presidencies of the committees. 
For your calendars: The EPP and Greens will be the first to hold their meetings, which will be key moments when they will have to decide on new members in the week of June 17, then Renew, Socialists and ECR and Left will hold their first group meetings the last week of June, and finally ID will meet in early July.
POLITICO’s Leyla Aksu has made another playlist of songs to get you in the mood for the election. This week’s has some top tunes from Bulgaria. Here it is. Enjoy.
MEP trivia: Name another EU country (ie, not the Netherlands) where a liberal party has governed with the far-right or been propped up by them. Email me your answer at [email protected]
We didn’t have a trivia question last week because we wanted you to take our EU Election Quiz. This week’s quiz is here.
Casual reminder: We’re also on WhatsApp! Follow our account here to stay up to date on the latest European election news in between Playbook editions.
Send in your campaign posters! Eddy’s building an online collection of EU election campaign posters around the Continent. Please send him your posters if you spot some on your travels.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the EU election … but were too afraid to ask: Why can you vote for Giorgia Meloni but not Ursula von der Leyen? What is the late Silvio Berlusconi doing on campaign literature? Why is it so much easier to vote in Estonia than Belgium? With two weeks to go before voters head to the polls, the EU Confidential podcast offers a safe, judgment-free space to answer a wide range of questions. Whether you’re looking for EU Elections for Dummies, or you’re a seasoned Brussels pro who’s been through this process many times before, we promise you’ll learn something new as POLITICO’s Laurens Cerulus, Barbara Moens and Eddy Wax join host Sarah Wheaton for a rollicking Q&A session. Listen here.
Current election excitement level: Sheer chaos! 
Last word: “This is not Europe, these are not European values, this is an agreement with a very special nasty dictatorship,” said Socialist lead candidate Nicolas Schmit to Ursula von der Leyen at the EBU debate, talking about the EU’s migration-curbing deal with Tunisia. 
THANKS TO: Hanne Cokelaere and Paul Dallison.
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