EPP breaches its political firewall with the far-right on European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee

Yesterday in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, the EPP once again breached its political firewall with far-right extremists, cooperating with the PfE, ECR and ESN to push through two highly sensitive migration files. The EPP secured the rapporteurship for the Safe Third Country Regulation and handed the rapporteurship on the Safe Country of Origin Regulation to ECR — an unprecedented move.

Fabienne Keller, Renew Europe coordinator (Renaissance, France), is calling on the EPP to reconsider its approach and return to the political centre:

"At the EPP conference in Valencia, the party reaffirmed its principle of total non-cooperation with the radical right. It’s what the German coalition agreement says.

Today we once again see that position is not at all reflected in the European Parliament. Examples are the failure of the Ethics Body, the combined attack against NGOs and most recently the shelving of the greenwashing directive.

But it is particularly shocking to see this cooperation so openly, on an issue as complex and sensitive as migration and asylum.

I call on the EPP to return to the political centre — to return to the pro-European coalition on which the Commission programme relies and which is the only hope for a stronger Europe for citizens."