EPP party conference: A right-wing program for the liberal candidate

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EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the EPP party conference in Bucharest

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Vadim Ghirda / AP

The main message for the party conference of the European People's Party (EPP) was deposed by its chairman Manfred Weber before it had even begun.

On Wednesday morning he wrote on Platform Anyone who is against this cannot be a partner.

Weber apparently felt compelled to clarify this again.

The other parties accuse the EPP of conducting a right-wing election campaign.

The European center-right parties are meeting in Bucharest this week.

Ursula von der Leyen is to be named the top candidate on Thursday, and the election program was approved on Wednesday.

And in this the conservatives are indeed clearly blinking to the right.

To the brand core

Among the delegates at the party conference there is talk of a “back to the core of the brand”.

While von der Leyen's first term in office was characterized by the Green Deal, the conservatives are now specifically setting counterpoints.

The EU's competitiveness should be strengthened and migration would be further limited.

The EPP is now campaigning for asylum procedures in third countries, something the Union is already campaigning for in Germany.

On the stage of the party conference, almost all speakers repeatedly emphasized that they were committed to the interests of “our farmers”.

Instead of climate change, they want to make a name for themselves in the election campaign with security and defense policy.

This is where the greatest unity can be felt among the various European parties.

The EPP wants a real foreign minister for the EU and is even calling for a nuclear protective shield for the European Union.

Whether this means that France should place the EU under its protective umbrella or that the EU - as was recently discussed - needs its own atomic bomb, remains unclear in the election program.

The election program was unanimously approved on Wednesday evening.

Only the Austrians declared that they did not actually support it and only agreed to it out of obligation.

This is due, for example, to the yes to nuclear power, to the expansion of the Schengen area to include Romania and Bulgaria - and above all because, according to the EPP's program, the EPP wants to abolish the unanimity principle in the area of ​​foreign and security policy.

This point is also controversial among the CDU and CSU.

Von der Leyen is expected to be named the top candidate on Thursday.

The liberal Christian Democrat is being forced to take a significantly more conservative course for the election campaign than actually suits her.

According to the polls, it is very likely that the EPP will win the election.

Things get tricky, especially after that.

Von der Leyen needs a qualified majority in the EU Council and then a majority in Parliament.

It has not yet been decided whether she will again focus on rights that will be more strongly represented in the future.

But work has long been underway to determine how a majority could come about.

Von der Leyen and Weber have already set the criteria: Pro Europe, pro the rule of law, pro Ukraine – that should be the minimum criterion for cooperation.

This excludes the AfD or the National Front, for example; both parties would not vote for von der Leyen anyway.

Space for melons

However, there would be room for the post-fascist Fratelli d'Italia, the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The right-wing populist Sweden Democrats may also fall through the exclusion grid.

Meloni's party is even said to possibly join the EPP.

Weber has not yet ruled this out; in a recent interview with "Welt" he only said that it was "not an issue."

During the election campaign, the EPP will have to defend itself against accusations that it does not differentiate itself clearly enough from the far right.

The European SPD leading candidate Katarina Barley told SPIEGEL: "Anyone who takes the principle of the rule of law seriously will not end up with the neo-fascists from Italy." Meloni's planned constitutional reform aims to weaken parliament and ensure the rule of a single party .

Likewise, the “Swedish and Finnish right-wing extremists with whom the conservatives work together” have nothing to do with constitutional principles.

“Especially in Germany, there should be no doubt about this question.”

The Greens see things similarly, and they won't simply vote for von der Leyen, as they say.

“We expect Ms. von der Leyen to take a clear stance and rule out collaboration with nationalist and extreme politicians after the European elections,” said Rasmus Andresen, Green group leader in the EU Parliament.

It is “extremely dangerous” to give politicians like Meloni more power.

Left-wing leading candidate Martin Schirdewan expects von der Leyen to speak plainly in her speech at the party conference on Thursday.

"Far too often in recent years there has been open cooperation between conservatives and the right in parliament." And further: "Now is the crucial time to call Manfred Weber back on his overtures to the far right."