According to the provisional results of the European elections, the European People's Party group has captured 264 seats in Strasbourg, way ahead of the Party of European Socialists with 162 MEPs.
In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party captured twenty six seats – the same amount as the Labour and UKIP combined.
As seasoned observers of the European Parliament will know, the trans-national political group structure operated in the European Parliament makes it virtually impossible for any one political party to secure an outright majority in the 736-seat chamber.
As such, the system necessitates that informal 'coalitions' operate between two or more of the Parliament’s groupings in order to allocate positions such as the Presidency of the chamber, senior committee appointments and to pass legislation in plenary.
Looking at the 1999 and 2004 session of the European Parliament, broad “left” and “right” coalitions could be formed in order to influence the outcomes of any particular vote. On the “right” – and I use that word advisedly - the federalist European People’s Party and Union for a Europe of Nations groups, when joined by Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ELDR), were able to reach 50.1% of the vote. On the “left”, the Party of the European Socialists, Greens and Communist groups were, when joined by the ELDR on any particular vote boosted to 51% of the vote.
As such, this placed the ELDR in a crucial position of influence in the Parliament – and one they used to punch significantly above their weight throughout the session, securing the influential Presidency of the chamber and the chairmanship of the Committee on Justice and Home Affairs.
The ELDR’s position in the 1999 to 2004 session wasn’t, however, a one off.
Let’s take the example of our own Conservative Party back in the days when we sat with allies from Spain and Denmark in the European Democratic Group. In 1987, as a result of the aforementioned “coalition building” process in the Parliament the small 50-strong group was able to use its leverage in order to catapult Henry Plumb to the Presidency of the chamber - the first and only time a British MEP has held the position.
It is highly likely that, given the 264 seats secured by the EPP at the most recent elections that the newly-formed Conservative group will be in a similar position in the 2009 to 2014 session.
Conservative MEPs supportive of leaving the European People’s Party have long argued that it would be far better for the party to work constructively with the group on matters on shared objectives such as internal market liberalisation than to continue operating in the uneasy and ideologically-incompatible alliance they currently sit in. They’re right.
The new Conservative group, which many predict will contain upwards of sixty members when it convenes for the first time in Strasbourg on 14th July, will hold roughly 9% of the seats in the chamber – only a short way behind the Liberal group and in stronger position than the long-established Green group who held key ‘rapporteurships’ on issues such as EU asylum and migration policy and climate change in the 2004 to 2009 session.
Freed from the constraints of EPP membership and free to use the group’s position as a legislative ‘kingmaker’ as bargaining chip, the Conservatives will soon be in a significantly stronger position to deliver upon the objectives outlined by David Cameron at the launch of the Movement for European Reform back in 2007; deregulation and economic competitiveness, tackling global poverty, reforming the Common Agricultural, combating climate change and providing future energy security.
The Conservative Party in the European Parliament – just as the Conservative Party in the House of Commons – is about to become significantly more powerful.
