In a Nutshell

Writing in The Guardian, Alberto Alemanno argues that the European People’s Party (EPP) now relies on two different majorities in the European Parliament. Socialists, liberals and greens provide the votes that secure its control of the EU’s principal institutions. However, the EPP reportedly increasingly turns to parties further to its right when its centrist partners refuse its terms on legislation.

Alemanno points in particular to the EU’s new return regulation, approved with support from that alternative majority. The regulation would allow member states to deport people to detention centres outside EU territory, potentially placing them further from European courts, media scrutiny and public accountability.

He labels centrist parties as complicit because they do not make their support conditional on not working with less palatable partners.

Our Take

Political parties are entitled to assemble different majorities for different votes and a boycott policy is not a rule-of-law safeguard.

A commitment to a specific coalition holds only for as long as it is seen as politically convenient. It does nothing to limit what Parliament may decide once a different majority emerges. Worse, treating the identity of the voting parties as the principal safeguard distracts from the powers being exercised and the protections available against their misuse.

That is the real concern raised by the return regulation. Whatever one thinks of stricter migration enforcement, no ordinary majority should be able to place detention and deportation beyond effective judicial review, independent monitoring, media scrutiny and accessible remedies. If the legal framework permits that, excluding one political group from the coalition does not cure the vulnerability. It merely leaves the same power available to the next majority.

Europe needs guardrails that survive electoral change: enforceable rights, proportionality, transparent procedures, independent oversight and competent courts. These safeguards must bind every coalition, whether it is described as centrist, conservative or far right.

The answer to shifting majorities is not a more elaborate boycott. It is a legal order in which changing the majority does not change the reach of the safeguards.

Read the full story at The Guardian.