Cracks are surfacing in the EU’s cosy cartel

Ursula von der Leyen is, in effect, the uncrowned queen of the European Union. She has served as president of the European Commission since 2019. More than any other political figure, von der Leyen personifies the EU’s imperial ambitions and authoritarian instincts. Yet last week, she only just survived a vote of no confidence in her leadership.

That the would-be queen of Europe came so close to losing her grip on power reflects the deep instability of the political bloc that backs her. The four parliamentary factions that support her – the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), the centrist Renew, the Socialists and the Greens – find it increasingly difficult to offer her their unconditional support. The Socialists, Greens and Renew worry that von der Leyen has been too accommodating to right-wing critics of the EU’s Green Deal and mass migration. In the days leading up to the confidence vote, even MEPs from parties aligned with von der Leyen were openly criticising her presidency.

Until recently, von der Leyen’s allies had managed to sideline the influence of conservative and right-wing parties in the European Parliament by imposing an informal cordon sanitaire around them. But since the 2024 EU elections, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), together with the new right-wing Patriots for Europe faction (mostly made up of members of the former Identity and Democracy group), have gained considerable ground. The quarantine around them is now starting to unravel. In response, von der Leyen has edged cautiously to the right, even forming a tacit working relationship with the ECR. That is why some of her usual allies sat on their hands rather than vote against the no-confidence motion.

In the end, many MEPs from the dominant party factions backed von der Leyen not out of loyalty or principle, but because they feared that any upheaval would hand even more influence to the ECR and the Patriots. The EU’s centrist parties have just one overriding goal: to maintain the status quo at all costs. That is why, despite her growing unpopularity, von der Leyen remains relatively secure for the time being. Her allies simply don’t want to rock the boat.

It is worth noting that the European Parliament is not really a democratic institution. It functions more as a Potemkin parliament – a stage-managed performance in which the dominant party blocs pretend to represent voters. Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP, the largest group in the parliament and von der Leyen’s chief backer, let the mask slip when he said last week: ‘We are the oldest group in [the European Parliament], we respect its political culture. The European Parliament is not Westminster.’ What he meant, in effect, was that he prefers a system governed by gentlemanly backroom deals, not by genuine adversarial debate, as practised in the UK House of Commons.

In practice, the European Parliament has institutionalised its own version of American-style pork-barrel politics. Von der Leyen’s power rests on her ability to balance competing demands for access to EU largesse. But the rise of increasingly confident dissident, populist parties threatens this balancing act – and with it, the old EU order.

The EU is held together by what can best be described as a cartel regime. This is a system based on parties that agree, implicitly or explicitly, to collude with each other. Political scientists Richard Katz and Peter Mair coined the term ‘cartel party’ to describe the trend of parties becoming semi-state actors that use public resources to shield themselves from electoral competition. In the European Parliament, the main objective of the cartel parties is not to represent voters, but to control the distribution of the EU’s vast resources.

Collusion between these cartel parties is the norm, reducing political contestation to a minimum. Their shared goal is to defend the system from challengers. That is why they frequently strike formal and informal pacts to block populist parties from gaining a foothold in the EU’s institutions.

Since these cartel parties have virtually no ideological commitments, they can easily make deals with opponents. Parliamentary debates become pure performance. Real decisions happen out of sight, behind closed doors. This is why the EU bureaucracy and the unelected European Commission play such dominant roles in shaping policy – debates in the European Parliament are little more than window dressing.

Von der Leyen may have survived for now, but it is surely only a matter of time before she faces another no-confidence vote. If she is eventually forced out, it won’t be because democracy has suddenly arrived in Brussels. It will be because her fellow cartel members have lost patience with her management of the regime.

Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC-Brussels.