As Europe’s Conservatives Rally Around Merz, Von Der Leyen Left In The Cold

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By Nick Alipour

(EurActiv) — The leaders of the European People’s Party gathered in Berlin on Saturday to endorse and celebrate the man they’re betting will become Germany’s next chancellor and bring the country back under the roof of their powerful centre-right bloc.”Large parts of Europe are looking forward to a stable government and a Chancellor Friedrich Merz,” Manfred Weber, the EPP leader said of his fellow German after the meeting.

Whether “large parts of Europe” have really given much thought to Merz is largely irrelevant, however, considering that only Germans will able to vote in the election in five weeks. On that score, Merz looks to be wobbling a bit. Though his Christian Democrats still lead the field with about 30%, some polls suggest support for the centre right might be softening, while the far right is strengthening.

Though the EPP is already the strongest political family in Europe, returning Germany, the EU’s dominant force, to its column would be major boost.

Underscoring just how important Germany is to the group, nine EPP heads of state and government as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Berlin to offer their support. The gathering marked von der Leyen’s return to the public stage after her recent pneumonia-induced break from public engagements.

The German Christian Democrats are the largest branch of the EPP, comprising about one-third of the party’s lawmakers in the Parliament. With Weber, a Bavarian, in charge, they remain firmly in control of the EPP’s operations as well.

Even so, the Christian Democrats’ narrow loss in Germany’s 2021 election relegated the party to the opposition benches and diluted their influence. Without the chancellery, the Christian Democrats no longer sported the most consequential players in negotiations over top EU jobs last summer, for example.

That is about to change.

The EPP’s messaging in Berlin made it clear that the CDU will return in the driver’s seat, if Merz becomes chancellor.

The two policy manifestos that the leaders signed off on largely read like they were plugged from the CDU’s election manifesto. That’s not surprising, given that the Germans had prepared the original proposal of the anti-bureaucracy pamphlet at the heart of the meeting, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The four-page document advocates “cutting back” on EU-level regulation, which some believe the Commission president has fuelled with her first-term Green Deal.Notably, those who still find von der Leyen’s efforts to slash red tape wanting appeared to have prevailed, as the final document brands her latest legislation not bold enough – despite the involvement of von der Leyen’s team in negotiations.

The party “stands behind” the “Merz plan for de-bureaucratisation in Europe”, Weber said on stage.

The proposals also headlined the second document, the EPP’s political priorities for 2025, which Weber sees as the basis for von der Leyen’s upcoming Commission programme.

The signal on who will be charting the course in Europe once the chancellor is back in the EPP camp could not have been clearer.

EurActiv

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