Brussels is stuck in an impasse

Forget Brexit. The real battle for taking control is being waged deep within the heart of the European Union itself, where major changes in the Parliament and a troubled start for the new regime at the Commission have combined to create gridlock in Brussels.

The signs of the splintering of the old order are everywhere to be seen.

First, there was the collapse earlier this year of the Spitzenkanditat process of selecting the new European President. Once upon a time, Manfred Weber, as leader of the EPP which gained the highest number of seats, would automatically have been chosen as President. In the event, Ursula Von der Leyen, the former German defence minister and president-elect was only nominated after a tortuous fight in the Council, and by a narrow majority of nine votes.

Second, there is still no new Commission. Von der Leyen has had a miserable start to her reign. Since her election address, the only news of note from her came via Germany’s Die Welt newspaper saying that she would be sleeping in a small room next to her office on the 13th floor of the Berlaymont building to save money.

It was a nice gesture. But the 61-year-old mother of seven cannot work or sleep in the office because there is no new Commission, yet. Three of the Commissioners nominated by France, Hungary and Romania were rejected in a humiliating vote by the parliament and new ones are unlikely to be appointed until December.

Delays are not new: in 2004 the commission headed by Jose Manuel Barroso was three weeks late and his second commission, was several months late. Yet this year’s delay looks far more significant, a sign that the European Parliament is flexing its muscles over what sort of route it wants the EU to take.

From the outside, the postponement reflects not only the gridlock but also the weakness of Von der Leyen’s leadership because of her inability – or unwillingness – to rein in the EPP rebels within her own grouping. It is a double blow for her: it raises questions about her legitimacy since she derives power both from the European Council as well as the parliament, which is caught in a stalemate.

The president-elect is only a couple of months into her new role. But she has managed to infuriate Weber, her fellow EPP member, and more pertinently, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, who secured her the post. Not a clever way to start.

Macron is still fuming that the parliament rejected his candidate, Sylvie Goulard of the liberal Renew Europe group and he feels personally betrayed by the von der Leyen and the EPP group, it is reported. Yet much of the criticism of Goulard came from the EPP itself, a move which many see as revenge by Weber against Von der Leyen for beating him to the top job.

The EPP was backed by the S&D and the Greens, a move that could still backfire on the EPP as the two biggest parties will need partners like Renew Europe – which is now the third biggest grouping with 108 MEPs – if it is to continue ruling the roost.

Weber and his EPP opposed Goulard because they wanted to show what happens when you abandon the Spitzenkanditat system. They also did it to get at President Macron to show who is boss in Europe.

Macron, who is by far the most pro-EU French president for decades, has a clear vision for his sort of Europe. He favours a multi-tier Europe with a core of committed euro states clustered around France and Germany. Outside of this core, he envisages an outer ring of non-euro states that share in its “values, democratic principles and economic freedoms”.

As his private advances to President Putin earlier this year suggested, Macron takes the line that Russia should be brought in from the cold. Turkey could be a member of this outer ring too, he says, but he has closed the door to Albania and North Macedonia joining the EU.

This stance has not gone done well within the EU. Eastern Europeans with long historical memories are understandably furious that Macron is cosying up to Putin.

The French President has pressed on regardless. Macron said recently: “Excuse me for not yielding to the tyranny of the majority or the pressure of the Brussels bubble.”

But the battle in the European Parliament suggests that such an arrogant approach is unlikely to yield results in the next few years. A struggle for control is playing out in the Parliament.

On one side is the old guard made up of the two traditional political parties which have ruled the continent for decades almost without challenge. This political grouping – the European People’s Party (EPP) and the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) – is now in a fight for survival against the upstart parties which, working together, could command a majority position in the new European Parliament.

In essence, what we are witnessing is a clash between the older generation of politicians – on both the traditional right and left – who are wedded to the 20th century view of looking at European politics through the prism of class struggle. These “old men in a hurry”, as one observer put it, are also wedded to the idea of a deeply integrated, federal European Union.

Ganging up against them are a younger crop of MEPs and parties with a more iconoclastic outlook. They are drawn from a generation which is more interested in identity politics and environmental rights – or migration – than issues based on class alone.

As one former MEP says: “What the EPP and the S&D still do not realise is that their beliefs, which are based on socially conservative, often Catholic, values mixed with an interventionist economic outlook, are outdated. It’s a view based on the industrial landscape of a 100 years ago which was dominated by people being in one place of work all their lives, and on the power unions. That has gone. Their parties are dwindling across Europe from Sweden to Spain. Kaput.”

Added to this, the European Parliament is more factional and geographically divided than ever. There are now thirteen different political parties represented, and seven political groupings. At the same time, the rift between western and eastern member countries is growing, made all the more apparent when none of the top jobs in the new parliament went to eastern Europeans.

This autumn the result of these clashes is gridlock. For the first time since 1979, the EPP and S&D no longer have an absolute majority allowing them to control the European Parliament. This means they can only wield power if they work with the parliament’s other parties.

In the elections earlier this year the EPP parties suffered losses across Europe, in Germany, Italy, France and Spain. Support for Socialist and Democratic parties also collapsed with seats lost in Germany, Italy, France and the UK. The EPP now has 182 seats while the S&D have 154 MEPs.

No wonder there is a standoff when you have so many breakaway groupings: look at the numbers. The EPP and S&D are down to 336 votes out of 748. To push policy through committees or parliament, they will need to win over some of these smaller groups such as Renew Europe which has 108 MEPs.

The Greens and related parties have 74 seats while the Identity and Democracy Party has 73 MEPs from the far-right populist parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Italy’s Matteo Salvini’s Northern League party. They all made gains.

Ironically, Britain’s Brexit party has 29 MEPs and, although it is not part of any grouping, it is the biggest single political party. The Conservative ECR Group is down to 62 seats, mainly because it lost seats from the UK Conservative Party.

That brings us to Brexit, where there is also gridlock. The Brexit negotiations have been a failure because they have not produced a resolution. For a successful negotiation, there needs to be a win-win outcome for both sides and a feeling of mutual respect. Until Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, it’s fair to say the EU had the upper hand and set the red lines.

Apart from on the Irish backstop, the EU bureaucracy has shown itself to be immoveable, inflexible and unimaginative. Three and a half years since the British voted to leave, the Commission and the leaders of the 27 opted to kick the can down the road again until January 31^st rather than forcing a decision.

Is this toxic legacy of gridlock what the European Union wants to project? And is a weakened Commission under Von der Leyen capable of successfully overseeing a successful negotiation on the future relationship with the UK?

We shall see. What the EU has managed to achieve with its rigid Brexit stance is to frighten off the more Eurosceptic countries such as Italy and France. For now, Le Pen’s National Rally and Salvini’s League have stopped banging the drum about leaving the EU or the euro. Instead, they are portraying Brussels as the bad cop to whip up domestic support. Expect their MEPs to disrupt policy on migration or row about budgets as much as they can in parliament. But the moves towards Frexit or Quitaly have died a death.

The EU has other tough challenges ahead: the risk of a standoff with Turkey and the danger that President Erdogan will let migrants back into Europe, friction with Western Balkan countries which have been vetoed entry by France, quarrels with President Trump over the European Army as well as tariffs and negotiations with Russia next year over natural gas exports.

Throw into this simmering mix the fact that Germany is teetering on the edge of recession, Europe’s banks are bloated with massive debt and the eurozone economy is faltering.

Dealing with these huge challenges will test Brussels and the Commission to the limit. By comparison, resolving Brexit early next year could be a piece of cake.