Friday 26 July 2019

Liberal influence in Europe

There is confirmation of the shift in the centre of power in the European Union caused by the rise of Liberal representation after this year's European Parliament elections. In the following report from VoteWatch Europe, Renew Europe is the grouping which includes ALDE, of which British Liberal Democrats form a large part, and Emanuel Macron's La République En Marche!

Renew Europe is confirmed as the kingmaker in the new EP as the group was on the winning side on all the votes cast so far. That is because the group sided with a right-leaning coalition on issues concerning Venezuela and Russia, while it sided with a left-leaning coalition on issues concerning the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border. The performance of the other ‘rebranded’ group, namely Salvini’s Identity and Democracy was, not surprisingly, quite different. In fact, the right-wing group was mainly on the losing side, with the only exception of the votes on Venezuela. In this case, a majority of ID members were on the winning side when backing a tougher stance towards the actions of Maduro’s government. However, their French members (ie. Marine Le Pen’s colleagues) disagreed with the Italian League and other delegations and voted against recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate President of the country.

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