Only the conservatives of the Benelux, Ireland and Germany are still reluctant to these pactsThe Spanish Government in December 2023 and the Europeans of 2024 are the first objectivesThe reception of the Italian Giorgia Meloni settles the internal debate in the conservative familyThe European People’s Party was the force dominant in EU politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the socialists began to lose their footing. There were years of leftist governments in the main European countries (François Hollande in France, Enrico Letta in Italy, Gerhard Schröder in Germany or José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Spain), but the trend was in favor of the conservatives. His were the heads of government of the main countries of the European Union for more years. His were the presidents of the European Commission since July 2004 with the Portuguese Durao Barroso, who was succeeded by the also “popular” Jean-Claude Juncker and Úrsula Von der Leyen. Theirs were the majorities in the European Council. That time is over. The financial crisis that began in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and more than a decade later the pandemic left the “popular” Europeans in their bones. The most populous country in the European Union that currently has a head of government from that political family, to which the Spanish Popular Party belongs, is Romania. Spain and Germany have socialist leaders. France, Belgium and the Netherlands have liberals. Poland an ultraconservative whose party, the PIS, sits in the European Parliament in the same group as VOX. Italy to a woman of the extreme right. The ‘popular’ have to make do with the heads of government of ‘minor’ countries in the European Union such as Romania itself, Greece or Austria. The end of the conservative hegemony led its national and European leaders to debate what to do with the extreme right. The European People’s Party broke there into two clearly differentiated halves. The ‘popular’ knew that the extreme right was growing above all by eating its electorate and discussed whether pacts with the ultras were the best option or a risk, both for their future and for democracy. In the first moments, the faction that believed that with the extreme right or coffee prevailed. When Alberto Núñez-Feijoó took over the leadership of the PP and agreed to the pact with VOX in Castilla y León, the then leader of the EPP and former president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said: “For me it was a sad surprise. Pablo Casado was a personal guarantee of keeping the Popular Party in the center of the right, avoiding this type of flirtation with the radicals, with extreme right-wing movements such as VOX”. Exit of Tusk and victory of MeloniTusk, with the support of the Dutch conservatives , Belgians, Luxembourgers or Germans, marked that line. But Tusk left just as Angela Merkel left (who also always rejected those pacts) and the wind changed. The new European leader of the ‘popular’, the Bavarian Manfred Weber, took over the reins. He had just suffered a humiliation. He was the EPP candidate for the 2019 European elections and after the victory of the formation he should be the president of the European Commission. But the governments, including his, did not see the stature or the experience. He had not even been a minister when former heads of government were succeeding each other. Weber was the flower of a day and the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron proposed to Angela Merkel that of his Defense Minister, Úrsula Von der Leyen. Weber stayed where he was, as popular spokesman in the European Parliament. The departure of Tusk, who returned to Poland to prepare his party for future battles against the PIS ultra-conservatives, established Weber as the leader of the EPP. And the wind towards the extreme right changed because if in Germany his party (the CSU, the Bavarian sister of the CDU) maintains the cordon sanitaire, Weber is ideologically more flexible and his priority is above all that his own govern. Not only people and their affinities, likes and dislikes moved the PPE. The electoral results played a key role because in some countries the extreme right ate the toast. The French conservatives saw how their candidate, Valérie Pécresse, remained in the presidential elections last April at 4.78% while the leader of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen, rose to 23.15%. Meloni’s ‘Brothers of Italy’ went up to 26% while Silvio Berlusconi’s ‘Forza Italia’, a member of the EPP, had to settle for 8%. Weber then blessed the Italian coalition. There was also a pact in Sweden last month. To unseat the Socialists (30.33%), the “Moderates” (PPE family) (19.10%) agreed with the extreme right of ‘Sweden Democrats’ (20.54%). These pacts still cause rashes in a small part of the conservatives of the Benelux, Ireland or Germany but the majority of the members of the EPP already see them with good eyes. The argument that is used now, which is the same that Weber used to justify Berlusconi agreeing with Meloni, is that they serve to guarantee that these governments do not take to the hills, that they have a pro-European political force that places limits on ministers of extreme right. Meloni welcomed in Brussels without discrepancies The visit of the Italian Giorgia Meloni to Brussels this Thursday served to certify that the “pactists” prevailed over the “isolationists”. The Italian was received with all the honors and the best of her smiles by the Maltese conservative Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament. Metsola is the person with the most power in the conservative faction open to pacts with the ultras. With good manners but measured smiles and mutual suspicions by the also conservative Úrsula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. And with a serious face and strictly institutional statements by the president of the European Council, the Belgian liberal Charles Miguel, whose party, the Belgian MR, would never accept that pact. Beyond the succession of national elections, the European elections in May 2024 will mark up to to what extent the fall of the EPP makes it lose primacy in the European Parliament and how far the pacts go. The movement would fully affect the European institutions, from their policies for parliamentary majorities to the appointments of senior officials. Until now, the three great political families (popular, socialist and liberal) agreed on those names. Álvaro Oleart, post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Brussels, explains to NIUS that this new scenario “can lead to a more conflictual logic. By needing the support of centrist groups for most parliamentary measures, it is likely that the Social Democrats (the PSOE family) will be forced to build a closer relationship with the parties to their left”, environmentalists and the radical left. That would lead, considers this researcher, “to a policy of more marked ideological blocs, given that the cooperation of the EPP with the extreme right would complicate the pacts with the center-left and even in some cases with the liberals.” Oleart considers that “the The ever closer relationship between the traditional right and the extreme right at the European level has profound and important consequences for the fragile balance of power in the European institutions. These, socialized in a culture of consensus among the large centrist political groups, must now integrate actors who not only openly reject certain dimensions of European integration, but also do so on a nationalist basis.” In return, the European People’s Party he could aspire to regain power from the hand of the extreme right in countries where he is now in opposition, starting with Spain within a year. There would be a first victim, Von der Leyen herself, unacceptable to the extreme right due to the cordon sanitaire of her party in Germany. In exchange for her support, the extreme right would demand from the EPP a more conservative candidate and a shift in political priorities.