German MEPs push for formal centrist coalition in EU Parliament to sideline far right

Full text

Rival German lawmakers plot pact to shut out EU far right

Niclas Herbst and René Repasi want to shake up how the center-right and left work together. But will their bosses agree?

By MAX GRIERA

in BRUSSELS

Photo-Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO

Top lawmakers in the European Parliament want to replace the fragile alliance supporting Ursula von der Leyen with a formal German-style centrist coalition — over fears her group relies too much on the far right to pass legislation.

Niclas Herbst and René Repasi, the respective parliamentary leaders of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democrats and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil’s center-left Social Democrats — the two parties that govern Germany — said they want their pan-European political families to strike a deal to push through policies as a united front rather than bicker over issues they disagree on. In what would be a striking reversal of how their two groups have drifted apart, they want formal governance structures to resolve disputes and take turns promoting their priorities.

“If we don’t have trust, and if we don’t find good solutions, if we do not deliver for the people, the populists and extremists on the left and on the right will decide,” Herbst said, sitting in an armchair next to Repasi, in the center-left lawmaker’s office during a joint interview — itself a stunning case of two rival politicians wanting to put their differences aside to fight what they see as a common enemy. According to a POLITICO poll of polls , the three centrist groups are on course to lose 49 seats at the next election.

The far right’s gains in the 2024 EU election disrupted the longstanding balance between the two political groups that drove lawmaking for decades. The EPP, of which the CDU is a member, has increasingly relied on right-wing majorities due to fraying cooperation with the S&D, to which the German Social Democrats belong. With polls signaling further populist gains across the bloc, Herbst and Repasi warned that unless the center repairs the relationship, more extreme voices will increasingly call the shots in Brussels.

The Herbst-Repasi idea would also help reduce European Commission President von der Leyen’s political stress. Rivalry between the two centrist groups has made Parliament votes on some of her biggest policies increasingly unpredictable ― such as in January when MEPs sent her EU-Mercosur trade deal for judicial review. A coalition agreement would restore stability, giving the Commission and capitals greater confidence in Parliament’s ability to deliver von der Leyen’s program, the MEPs said.

Continued “frustration” and “distrust” stemming from the EPP striking deals with the far-right could eventually drive the two groups completely apart, triggering a “political catastrophe” because the whole Brussels system would be paralyzed, Repasi said.

‘Basis of trust’

With far-right and far-left forces on track to make major gains at the 2029 EU election, Herbst warned that failing to work together would give “even more ammunition to the populists from the left and the right,”allowing them to keep scoring “easy wins” in Parliament.

“If mistrust continues, it will only be amplified by the 2029 elections,” his center-left counterpart added. “The need to talk to each other is going to be even bigger.” He said a potential pact could serve as the “model” for the next legislature.

Since June 2024, the EPP has increasingly joined forces with far-right groups to pass key legislation, including on deportations, cuts to green reporting requirements for businesses, and delays and rollbacks to a deforestation law. The group has also relied on far-right votes to shape the agenda in Parliament’s decision-making bodies.

Borrowing from the German model, the two MEPs said the two main groups should work together more formally and no longer rely on negotiations file-by-file by individual lawmakers.

“If a trade-off is not possible within a file, we need to find a trade-off across files,” Repasi said. Partners need to agree on concessions that are “difficult to digest” for each other. This would create “this joint feeling of mutual trust.”

Compromises on which group gets the leading voice in different areas could be struck across files in advance, giving the two sides an incentive to stick together. The two MEPs also floated the idea of creating a new “governance structure” body to steer coalition disputes and allocate who gets which win, similar to the coalition committee between the CDU and SPD in Berlin.

Ursula von der Leyen delivers a speech during a plenary session at the Strasbourg European Parliament on May 20, 2026. | Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images

“We need more binding agreements on who will take the lead on which question,” said Herbst, who defended a deal but rejected the term ‘coalition,’ arguing it has different meanings across the EU. “Everybody needs to have some successes.” The EPP is the biggest group and hence needs to get its fair share of “wins,” though, he said.

Will it happen?

Whether Herbst and Repasi’s plan has legs depends on political will across the two groups — and there doesn’t appear to be much.

“This is nothing new,” said a spokesperson for S&D chief Iratxe García. “It was already on the negotiation table in 2024.”

A spokesperson for EPP head Manfred Weber didn’t reply to a request for comment. Herbst said Weber could be open to a broader deal, provided it reflected the rightward shift seen at the 2024 EU election.

After that vote, the two groups, along with liberal Renew, signed a two-page agreement vaguely promising to cooperate. That didn’t prevent the EPP from working with the far-right.

The plan’s key weakness is that lawmakers have fewer incentives to follow the party line than national lawmakers. Unlike in countries, Parliament cannot be dissolved and failure to maintain a majority does not bring down the Commission.

Members of the European parliament take part in an electronical vote. | Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP via Getty Images

That problem was on display when an EPP-S&D deal to cut red tape for businesses collapsed in October when center-left MEPs rebelled against their leadership, prompting the EPP to vote with the far-right.

Involving more MEPs in coalition negotiations would create greater ownership and discipline among lawmakers, Repasi said. In thinly veiled criticism of the groups’ leadership, he argued that the “previous way of how politics was done by two or three people at the very top that decided everything has just come to its limits.”

Forced together

Despite the two groups’ growing mistrust, they will soon have to find common ground on issues such as plans to water down a combustion-engine ban, a package simplifying environmental rules, including the contentious emissions trading system, a revamp of the EU border agency, Frontex, and the EU’s notoriously thorny seven-year budget.

“You might have some success with the far left or the far right on certain issues, but in the bigger picture we have far more in common with liberals and social democrats,” Herbst said.

There’s also the matter of who gets the Parliament presidency. MEPs expect the EPP’s Roberta Metsola to seek a third term as president, but the S&D insist it’s their turn. Failure to find a common candidate would expose the proposed centrist pact’s weakness before it even gets off the ground, Repasi said. Herbst agreed the two groups should agree on a common candidate.

The German tradition

The proposal comes as the leadership of both groups tries to beef up informal relations between top lawmakers, following souring relations between the two chiefs, Weber and García.

Asked why they were taking the initiative rather than relying on the group leaders, both pointed to Germany’s long tradition of grand coalitions.

“It is good that those who have made positive experiences with this sort of governance try to translate it into the European level … and therefore the impulse is coming from the two German heads of delegations,” Repasi said.

Herbst said he hadn’t directly consulted with Merz about the coalition plan, but that it was important to Berlin to have “good cooperation.” For his part, Klingbeil has been “informed” of the initiative, Repasi said, adding “it is also in the interest of the German government” that things agreed in Berlin are followed through in the EU Parliament.

“Let’s not talk too much about the past or personal relationships but look to the future,” Herbst said.