Not much is going right these days for the conservatives that have long controlled politics in the European Union.
After 16 years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the standard-bearer of Europe’s center-right and the continent’s most influential leader, is headed into retirement, to be succeeded by Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democratic Party. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, will go into opposition for the first time since 2005.
Meanwhile, Sebastian Kurz, the wonderboy of Austrian politics, resigned as chancellor in October amid a widening corruption scandal. Before his resignation, many viewed him as the model for modern European conservatism because of his coalition partnership with the Greens.
The mainstream center-right once dominated Western Europe, but by the end of this year won’t control the government of any of the EU’s four biggest economies — Germany, France, Italy, or Spain. In fact, the westernmost country led by a center-right government will soon be Slovenia. The European People’s Party’s conservative values have failed to resonate with young western Europeans embracing more left-wing parties that champion environmental causes.
Drifting Away from its Roots
At its founding, the European People’s Party had a clear center-right identity, anchored in Christian democratic and conservative values. The founding fathers of the EPP were also the fathers of the EU. Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi, Joseph Bech, and Robert Schuman united Europe on the bedrock of their center-right ideology.
Roland Freudenstein, vice-president of think-tank GLOBSEC and longtime policy director of the EPP’s internal think tank, told the HPR that the EPP wanted to move beyond Christian-democratic ideology to form a big tent.
“They wouldn’t call themselves European Christian Democrats, he said. “They’d call themselves the European People’s Party.” Freudenstein said the name change opened the door “for other center-right forces, mainly based on liberalism and on conservatism.”
Even when the party struggled in the late 1990s, losing some dominance to the social democrats, the EPP regained its power by recruiting more national parties.
Opening that door, however, also brought in forces based on populism and illiberalism. Most notably, Hungary’s Fidesz led by Viktor Orbán, which joined in 2000. Orbán’s nationalism and anti-EU rhetoric proved divisive, Fidesz ultimately quit the EPP in 2021 to avoid expulsion. Still, there was severe damage to the EPP’s reputation.
“Whether the EPP has gone too far in this ride to embrace different parties, different leaders, I would say that that’s an open question,” Freudenstein said. “The crisis that we’re seeing at the moment is also a crisis of having enlarged too fast or too far.”
European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas said in an interview that expelling Fidesz sent an important message. “The EPP probably took a bit more time than I would have personally liked to deal with Orbán and Fidesz, but in the end they did,” Schinas said. “The EPP understood that it would have nothing to gain by embracing these types of leaders.”
While the EPP expelled Fidesz, it still faces an internal threat from far-right populism. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša has generated criticism by embracing Donald Trump and allying with Orbán. Janša has also attacked journalists on Twitter and promoted conspiracy theories. “There are worrisome tendencies in Slovenia,” Freudenstein said. “If you look at the rhetoric and the tweets of the Slovenian Prime Minister, indeed, this is something that gives rise to big question marks.”
Despite Janša’s close relationship with Orban, Schinas warned against comparing the two and insisted Janša remained within the pro-EU conservative fold. “I do not think that is someone who is lost to Europe,” Schinas said of Janša.
However, there are concerns in the EU that Janša is headed down Orbán’s path. Janša’s attacks on press freedoms and his lengthy refusal to confirm his own country’s candidates to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office reflect poorly on the EPP.
In an interview, EPP Secretary-General Antonio López-Istúriz White argued that populism is being rejected in several countries across Europe in favor of “pro-European, stable parties.”
“We see that in some countries, people are beginning now to be tired of these populistic promises that never reach any solution,” López-Istúriz White said.
Schinas pointed to the mainstream liberal conservatism of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as more emblematic of the party’s future than Janša’s populism. “I would be more comfortable in an EPP with more Mitsotakises and fewer Janšas,” said Schinas.
The EPP would like voters to think that it is the party of Mitsotakis and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. But to do so, it must first confront its internal populist and illiberal elements. Europe’s conservatives must work to clearly define the identity of the EPP and ensure it is reflected throughout the party.
Identity Crisis
Nonetheless, Janša’s mere existence shows that the umbrella party of Europe’s center-right is very much in the midst of an identity crisis. Now, the party of the EU’s founding fathers also faces questions over whether it is becoming a relic of the past.
With the fight against climate change moving to the center of the international agenda, the Greens are positioning themselves as the party of the future of Europe. At the same time, traditional left-leaning progressives seem to have capitalized on pandemic-era discontent among mainstream voters, some of whom see a need for stronger social-welfare protections amid the combined health and economic crises. Others seem to be simply turning against center-right incumbents in search of change.
In eastern countries like Poland and Hungary, moderate conservatives are struggling to resurrect themselves after being vanquished years ago by harder-right extremists. Perhaps as a reaction to Brexit and the departure of the free-market minded U.K., liberals currently dominate in Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. “The political competition, both from the center, from the left, but also from the radical right, is getting stronger,” Freudenstein said. “The EPP has problems defining its identity in this situation.”
The far-right has used the issue of migration to pressure the EPP since the 2015 refugee crisis. For some voters concerned about the flood of arrivals, the far-right’s hardline anti-immigration stance offered a more appealing message than the center-right muddled response to the crisis. Merkel famously declared, “We can do this,” about accepting refugees but faced a barrage of criticism as a result. Overall, the center-right has never developed a clear position on the issue.
In 2019, during the most recent European Parliament elections, the EPP and the Party of European Socialists once again finished as the first- and second-largest factions. However, each party lost seats compared to 2014, and, according to polling from Europe Elects, the EPP was relegated to third place among voters between the ages of 18-24 in the 2019 election. The Greens received the most votes in that age bracket with PES in second.
The recent successes of the EU’s Green parties have not gone unnoticed by the EPP. Environmentalism has become one of the most important issues for European voters, as shown in a poll conducted ahead of the 2019 elections. The EPP wants to show that it can be trusted to tackle climate change.
López-Istúriz White said that the EPP is fighting to build credibility on the climate issues that are so important to younger voters. “I don’t think that in Europe today green politics are only subscribed to Green parties,” he said. “For example, the European Green Deal presented by Ursula von der Leyen is a product of the EPP.”
While von der Leyen’s role in passing the European Green Deal can hardly be ignored, the EU’s top official on climate policy is Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans, who is also the most senior social democrat in the Commission. Timmermans and the Greens in the European Parliament would certainly take issue with the EPP getting sole credit for the Green Deal.
Still, López-Istúriz White insisted that younger voters don’t recognize the EPP’s role in passing environmental legislation because they don’t read past headlines and slogans. “The problem is that we don’t have the ‘Green’ name,” he said. “The problem is that people do not look into the contents. If they look, they would know that the Green Deal and the very good programs from the European Commission have been done by people from the EPP.”
On the other hand, Freudenstein conceded that “the center-right is not the cutting edge” on climate change, but he said that by taking a less radical stance than other parties, the EPP can gain the trust of voters. “It is a position which tries to combine practicability, and the benefits of the middle class, and the majority of people with what is necessary to save the planet,” he said.
Schinas insisted that the EPP will need to be bolder on climate issues if it hopes to remain the dominant European political party in the future. “I think that in the years to come what will matter for the EPP is trying to move beyond the classical boundaries of Western Christian democracy as we knew it in the 80s and the 90s and embrace a more liberal, greener agenda,” Schinas said.
The EPP is struggling to understand its identity. It is not as green as the Greens, but not as conservative as the European Conservatives and Reformists Party. On policy issues ranging from climate change to migration, the EPP has embraced a more pragmatic position that has failed to resonate as strongly with voters.
Self-Inflicted Wounds
While the EPP faces political pressure from other parties with more clearly defined identities, the European conservatives are often their own worst enemies. The EPP has lost several of its leaders in recent years to scandals. Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is the latest EPP leader to resign after becoming embroiled in controversy at home, but he is far from the only one.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy had his hopes dashed for any possibility of a political comeback when he was convicted of corruption earlier this year. A political corruption scandal that rocked Spain’s center-right Partido Popular led to the ouster of former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a vote of no confidence in 2018.
Angela Merkel’s departure and her lack of potential successors, due partly to the high number of these political scandals, have led to a crisis of leadership in the EPP. The party will now be without its most well-recognized leader who helped ensure that the EPP was synonymous with the EU. France’s liberal president Emmanuel Macron is vying for Merkel’s role as leader of the EU and attempting to divorce the EU from EPP primacy.
The fall of Kurz, however, is one of the biggest blows to the EPP in recent years. He became chancellor at the age of 31 in 2017, when he formed a coalition with the far-right nationalist FPÖ. Kurz later returned to the chancellery in early 2020 after reaching a coalition deal with The Greens. With Merkel’s retirement looming, the youthful head of Austria’s government was billed as the next leader of Europe’s center-right. Instead, a corruption scandal forced Kurz to resign before Merkel even managed to leave office.
With Kurz’s resignation, the EPP lost its most promising prospect. “He [Sebastian Kurz] was traded as the future of the EPP in terms of a national political leader that has pan-European appeal,” explained Freudenstein.
It remains unclear if Kurz will manage to stage a return in Austria after announcing his departure from politics on Dec. 2. However, the idea of Kurz, a national leader who can build coalitions with parties on both ends of the EU political spectrum, remains a model for the EPP. “The general concept of Sebastian Kurz to combine a modern outlook and a high flexibility in terms of coalition partners … still points toward the future of the EPP,” said Freudenstein.
López-Istúriz White refuted the idea that the EPP was unprepared for Merkel’s departure. “The press started to talk about the succession of Angela Merkel this summer,” he said. “Us, we have already been working on this since two years ago, when she announced she was not running.”
“We have had leadership of a single person during some years,” López-Istúriz White said, referring to Merkel. “Now is the time to return to what we used to have, our shared leadership. It is not only about Kurz. It is Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Greece, it’s Donald Tusk in Poland, it will be Pablo Casado in Spain — in opposition — but maybe in government in two years.”
The EPP’s Greek Hero
Since the EPP has lost power in northern and western Europe, the party’s political weight has shifted southeast, specifically toward Athens. Greece is the only Mediterranean country where the EPP governs.
According to Schinas, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis — who rose to power in 2019 — has what it takes to turn Greece into a major EPP player.
“There is a very strong Prime Minister, who won with an absolute majority. He is well prepared, he is mainstream, he is [a] pragmatic leader with the right mix of liberal ideas, but also green, geeky, digital,” said Schinas. “So he ticks all the boxes.”
“Can Greece under this kind of leadership become a central player in the EPP?” asks Schinas. “The answer is yes, definitely. At a certain extent, this is happening already.”
The EPP has been struggling in Western Europe, including a disappointing performance by Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance in September’s election, but these losses haven’t been reflected on the European level because the EPP has been making up for its defeats in the West with victories in the East.
“If you count in the moods in countries like Lithuania or Czechia, where the center-right has actually celebrated some spectacular successes in the last 12 months,” Freudenstein said, the EPP’s losses are somewhat “mitigated.”
This year’s election in Czechia provided a ray of hope for the EPP. SPOLU, a coalition of three right-wing parties led by the ECR’s Civic Democratic Party, won October’s election. While Petr Fiala of the Civic Democratic Party was appointed Czechia’s new prime minister, the EPP still celebrated the results since it is affiliated with the two other parties in the SPOLU coalition. The outcome of the Czech election is yet another sign that the EPP will continue to dominate in Eastern Europe.
While the EPP is currently in government in many Eastern European countries, López-Istúriz White insisted the EPP is not the party of just one region of Europe. “We have many governments in Eastern Europe, but for me, there is no Eastern Europe. For me, there is Europe,” he said. “The EPP is not about east, west, north, and south. It is about all of us.”
“The real cleavages are political cleavages, and cleavages around policy, not around geography,” Schinas said. “That’s what matters, and my guess is that’s what will continue to matter for the EPP in the years to come.”
If the EPP hopes for a viable future, some of its core leaders believe it must embrace the shift toward more liberal, greener politics. While moderate politicians like Mitsotakis seem to have the charm and political skill to lead the EPP family, populists like Janša pose a risk of serious internal fissures. There appears to be a contradiction at the core of the matter: a conservative mainstream that built its success anchored in tradition and stability now needs to forge a new identity by embracing change.
“I would like an advancement of reasonable, stable political forces that bring finally some stability to the European political panorama,” López-Istúriz White said. “And that’s my wish, not only for Europe, but for many other countries, like the United States.”
Image Credit: Merkel Casado EPP Summit June 2019 from Antonio López-Istúriz used with permission of López-Istúriz’s office
